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So, I've never played AoS yet but wanted to get started. I've thought about Death since I always liked the Nagash novels and the Von Carsteins. I'd like to build a force that fits a theme, but I'm not into ball crunching tournament cheese lists. Can anyone give me a run down on Death, what it's good at, fluffy themed forces...hell, anything really.

Do nighthaunt(ghosts) Run banshees and cairn wraiths for heroes, spirit hosts for troops, hexwraiths where you can.

Oh, and 2 Mournguls. Very fluffy and you wil definitely not make anyone cry until they wet themselves. Not even a little.

ERJAK wrote:
Do nighthaunt(ghosts) Run banshees and cairn wraiths for heroes, spirit hosts for troops, hexwraiths where you can.

Oh, and 2 Mournguls. Very fluffy and you wil definitely not make anyone cry until they wet themselves. Not even a little.

May I ask what this force excels at or what it's strengths and weaknesses might be? Thanks for the reply!

 bomtek80 wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
Do nighthaunt(ghosts) Run banshees and cairn wraiths for heroes, spirit hosts for troops, hexwraiths where you can.

Oh, and 2 Mournguls. Very fluffy and you wil definitely not make anyone cry until they wet themselves. Not even a little.

May I ask what this force excels at or what it's strengths and weaknesses might be? Thanks for the reply!

They are a fast army, with their slowest model moving 6'' and quite a few more moving more.
They are a resilient army. All models come at least with two or moe wounds and have the ethereal rule: no rend whatsoever may affect them. That means that it's easy to stack strong saves with them.
They have a very strong mortal wound output, almost every unit in the army can deal them in one way or another.
It is the alleigance of the mournghul, who's a VERY resilient and strong unit.

Thing about the mournghouls is, they are from forge world.

Not many likes to play against FW models so dont bank on using them.
Nighhaunts do have high mobility and they can all fly, and they are indeed resilient and can do some decent dmg.
but tbh, i find the bonerattles(skeletons) to be more resilient.

However nighthaunt lacks a few basic things when you play whit points profile.(something that more or less every1 does now)
first off none of the nighthaunt heroes has any command abilitys, or any abilitys that buffs your units like heros from other sub factions has.
secondly, none of nighthaunts heroes are death wizzards by default so that means the black coach is usless as it can only be leveld up by a death wizzard, and they dont have the nighthaunt tag on them.
You could use it as a roadblock i guess since it has 7 wounds but would you?

so that basicly leaves you whit only 1 option: lots and lots of spirit hosts and hexwraiths. (and hexwraiths are now suddenly webstore exlusive only......)

Personly i would play the whole alliance.
Get skeltons as your battleline, a vamp lord as your general whit a wight king/banshee/cairn as hero support and the rest spirit hosts and hexwraiths plus the mortis engine.(even tough the mortis engine is sorunded by ghosts, it does not have the nighthaunt keyword)

plus you can allso add a deathlord(maybe nagash himself if you want). you cant do that in a nighthaunt only army.

Thanks for the replies everyone

Grain of salt: While I played a lot of Undead in WHFB back in the day (5th-6th) I’m still new to AoS. But here are some of my thoughts as a old newcomer to the hobby.

Against things that don’t rend, skeletons can take a HUGE amount of punishment and still hang in there. Against things that rend, they evaporate. To help tie stuff up that rends, I’ve been thinking hard about getting some spirit hosts. They seem like nice little units, just need to get some bases to try them out.

On offense, skeletons need big blocks. The extra attacks for 20/30 models is awesome, especially if you can stack some of our few buffs on the unit. The problem with a 20 man blob is that as soon as you loose one guy, you are back to your basic attacks. Hence, my push to get 3x30 man blocks of skellies.

Last game I fielded a vamp lord on a zombie dragon. He was the blender I needed. My previous list felt they lacked a hammer unit.

While I’ve been on the fence, I think I’m convinced that the Deathrattle Horde is worth the points.

It’s worth noting that my old army was very skeleton/wight/vampire centric, which shapes my entry into AoS.

I just ordered the SC:skeleton horde box. Mostly for the deathlord. I think I’m going to build him as Manfred. Good army buffs, decent beatstick. Army buffs being very important in AoS. Taking and layering them seems to be key to getting the most out of your army.

I just got the skeleton Horde Start collecting box as well. Arkhan looks pretty amazing and his stats seem pretty nice too. Does anyone know if his spell Curse of Years is nerfed by the 3 rules of 1 deal I saw in the GH? The spell seems to continuously allow you to keep rolling for more wounds until either you don't hit the target number needed or his victim/unit croaks.

 Nevelon wrote:


On offense, skeletons need big blocks. The extra attacks for 20/30 models is awesome, especially if you can stack some of our few buffs on the unit. The problem with a 20 man blob is that as soon as you loose one guy, you are back to your basic attacks. Hence, my push to get 3x30 man blocks of skellies.

Last game I fielded a vamp lord on a zombie dragon. He was the blender I needed. My previous list felt they lacked a hammer unit.

While I’ve been on the fence, I think I’m convinced that the Deathrattle Horde is worth the points.

yup, if you are planning on take reliable advantage of the extra attacs whit the skellys, you need to use them as a 30 man unit for 2 attacs or 40 man unit for 3 attacs. the necro does wonders whit the bonerattles, and so does the vamp lord and both versions of the wight king.

the vamp lord on dragon is one of the best multi wound heros in the alliance. just remember that in pitched play, blood boil do not generate any extra attacs.
you could allso take a look at the morghast archai if you want a cheaper unit that hits hard, 3 attacs, 3 dmg and -2 rend per model hurts.

 bomtek80 wrote:
I just got the skeleton Horde Start collecting box as well. Arkhan looks pretty amazing and his stats seem pretty nice too. Does anyone know if his spell Curse of Years is nerfed by the 3 rules of 1 deal I saw in the GH? The spell seems to continuously allow you to keep rolling for more wounds until either you don't hit the target number needed or his victim/unit croaks.

yes it is affect by the 3 rules of 1, everything that generate a free extra attac is removed in pitched. so you basicly just get the first 10 dices, nothing more.
if you allso get the maligants starter box plus say 3 more boxes of skellys(they are 10 models per box, then you have a solid starter army.


one more thing, if you both are planning on using summons if you have a death wizzard, the points you want to spend on summons is included in the totalt point number.
aka if you are playing a 1000p game and you want to spend 240p in summons, then you only have 740 points left for the non summond units.

Yeah death got screwed in the summoning department. Also, they got screwed in a lot of spells like arkhans. This is unfortunate in tourneys and events. My friends and I have houseruled to make summoning a little better for Death since the nerfs hit them so hard. You can attempt to summon any unit in which you had paid points for, but lost. Ex. Paid for 40 skellies, lost 13... can attempt to summon a unit of 10 skellies using the summing rules.

 bomtek80 wrote:
I just got the skeleton Horde Start collecting box as well. Arkhan looks pretty amazing and his stats seem pretty nice too. Does anyone know if his spell Curse of Years is nerfed by the 3 rules of 1 deal I saw in the GH? The spell seems to continuously allow you to keep rolling for more wounds until either you don't hit the target number needed or his victim/unit croaks.

Curse of years is not affected by the rule of 1 in question, because that rule specifically references attacks while CoY is a spell.

I’ve debated leaving a little room in my points for a little bit of summoning. Partly so I can list tailor on the fly. High rend opponent? Summon some etherial things. Shooting? Face full of bats. Etc. Also considered it for the mobility aspect. Last game I played my opponent had a 30 man unit of chaos warrior chained out getting buffs from the backfield. I didn’t have any shooting, and only one unit with a chance to get back there (which failed to kill anything) The though was if i had 100 points to spare, I could just pop something back there to work over the squishy caster types.

Still 100% theory here, but might be worth experimenting with. Not going to invest in any units that focus on summoning. But I think it might be a nice little option to explore. The hard part would be dragging more options down to the FLGS. My undead already don’t pack nicely.

 Nevelon wrote:
I’ve debated leaving a little room in my points for a little bit of summoning. Partly so I can list tailor on the fly. High rend opponent? Summon some etherial things. Shooting? Face full of bats. Etc. Also considered it for the mobility aspect. Last game I played my opponent had a 30 man unit of chaos warrior chained out getting buffs from the backfield. I didn’t have any shooting, and only one unit with a chance to get back there (which failed to kill anything) The though was if i had 100 points to spare, I could just pop something back there to work over the squishy caster types.

Still 100% theory here, but might be worth experimenting with. Not going to invest in any units that focus on summoning. But I think it might be a nice little option to explore. The hard part would be dragging more options down to the FLGS. My undead already don’t pack nicely.

You have the right idea, it also helps with summoning the right unit to snag an objective (like a hero for three places of power).

 FrozenDwarf wrote:
Thing about the mournghouls is, they are from forge world.

Not many likes to play against FW models so dont bank on using them.
Nighhaunts do have high mobility and they can all fly, and they are indeed resilient and can do some decent dmg.
but tbh, i find the bonerattles(skeletons) to be more resilient.

However nighthaunt lacks a few basic things when you play whit points profile.(something that more or less every1 does now)
first off none of the nighthaunt heroes has any command abilitys, or any abilitys that buffs your units like heros from other sub factions has.
secondly, none of nighthaunts heroes are death wizzards by default so that means the black coach is usless as it can only be leveld up by a death wizzard, and they dont have the nighthaunt tag on them.
You could use it as a roadblock i guess since it has 7 wounds but would you?

so that basicly leaves you whit only 1 option: lots and lots of spirit hosts and hexwraiths. (and hexwraiths are now suddenly webstore exlusive only......)

Personly i would play the whole alliance.
Get skeltons as your battleline, a vamp lord as your general whit a wight king/banshee/cairn as hero support and the rest spirit hosts and hexwraiths plus the mortis engine.(even tough the mortis engine is sorunded by ghosts, it does not have the nighthaunt keyword)

plus you can allso add a deathlord(maybe nagash himself if you want). you cant do that in a nighthaunt only army.

The forgeworld thing in general is a myth. The majority of the time people won't even realize the model is forgeworld.

People don't like playing against Mournguls because they are the single most powerful unit in the death codex(ignoring buffs, obviously pre-nerf Necropolis Knights are superior point for point with full buffs)