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Hi everyone, I started a Vampire Counts army back when 8th was on its end, but now I'd like to play it in AoS, thing is I don't own much yet. I have 10 Grave Guards with Great Weapons, 40 Skeleton Warriors with basic weapons, 1 Wight King with Baleful Blade, and 10 Ghouls. I'd like to theme my army around Skeletons and Spirits, but the limited choice of units (what were they thinking ?) makes me go Death as far as allegiance goes. I'd like to be able to build a 1000 pts list with what I own and the fewest purchases possible, good thing there's so many discount boxes available now at GW. Here's the draft:

Allegiance: Death

Leaders:
- 1 Wight King with Baleful blade: 120 pts
- 1 Necromancer: 110 pts

Battleline:
- 20 Skeleton Warriors with Ancient Blades: 160 pts
- 20 Skeleton Warriors with Ancient Blades: 160 pts

Others:
- 10 Grave Guards with Great Wight Blades: 160 pts
- 5 Hexwraiths: 160 pts
- 3 Spirit Hosts: 120 pts

TOTAL: 990 pts

So I've got my lot of questions too:
- I'd like to play a big block of 40 Skeletons for the point cost reduction + bonus attacks and durability, but I'd need a second Battleline. I don't want to buy more Skeletons right now, and Ghouls need their own Heroes to have their synergies, and I'm not a big fan of Flesh-Eaters. Am I right in thinking a big block of 60 Zombies is really good or not ? Maybe not that much for a 1000 pts game.
- Are the units above all effective or are some of them underperforming ? I'm not sure about the Spirit Hosts as I don't know any way to boost them, but their resilience looks nice I guess.
- If I buy the Spirits in the discount box I'll have a Cairn Wraith, is it good for its cost or not ? Its profile looks rather odd, I don't know what we're supposed to do with it. At least the Wight King boosts the Skeletons and the Necromancer looks like a must-have for Dance Macabre.
- Is my list TAC enough ? I honestly don't know what I'm most likely to face at that point level, do I cover every need ? I have flying fast Cavalry for getting to the archers, but that's the only fast unit I have here. I don't know if I'm well equipped for big save units and Mortal Wounds dealing. At least I can cover hordes I guess.
- For the Deathless Minions trait, does it work for every Death Hero or only the General ? The rule seems to indicate that every Death Hero gets the aura, but I'm not sure.

Thanks in advance for your time and advice

For what you want skeletons will be important, so lets talk skeletons. Basically when determining the size of a skeleton unit the 20-29th models are worth more than the first ones, the 30-39th are worth more than that, etc. This is the same for all units with scaling bonuses based on size, and generally means the maximum size is worth the most points per model. In other words, a 40-man unit with size benefits is worth more than two 20-man units inherently. However, free command groups make minimum sized units worth comparatively more, a significant factor for skeletons because their banner is quite strong.

Where does this leave you? Because the massive unit discount is the exact opposite of what balanced costs for the unit would look like, your 40-man units are far stronger for the cost than any other unit size. After that 10-man units are the best because of the banner being free, followed by 30-man units and finally 20-man units. So in terms of relative power level:
40>10>30>20. This means to make the strongest list you want to run only 40 and 10 man units of skeletons, and minimize use of 20 man units in particular.

Alright, I understand what you mean. Thing is, I only mounted one of each special Warriors (Musician, Banner and Champion) so as I prefer to stay WYSIWYG I'll probably keep the big unit. But that means I have to get a second Battleline, hence why I was thinking about Zombies. But then I'd have way too much Battleline units for my point level no ? Or I just buy ten more Skeletons and they act as bodyguards for the Necromancer.

A unit of 60 zombies is also strong, and for the same reasons..

Some good ideas with your list, some that could use some work.

In order to get the most value out of your Necromancer you are going to want to change something around. Personally I would drop the graveguard (use them as skeletons) for more skeletons.

If you drop the Graveguard you can then take a 40 strong skeleton unit for 280, which makes way better use of your Necromancer and Wight King. it also probably does more damage, and has more survivability - triple win. In terms of adding models to your existing collection, skeletons are also pretty much the cheapest thing you can spend your money on.

Now you have something that looks like this:

WK
Necromancer
40 Skeletons
20 Skeletons

- 670 points

That takes care of your skeleton theme. As explained above, you could also drop the unit of 20 down to 10, (meaning you don't have to buy any more skeleton models). If you do this you have enough points spare for 3 x 3 Spirits Hosts, and in friendly games a Cairn Wraith and you'd be 10 points over. Personally I completely agree with NinthMusketeer in terms of using either 40 or 10, but if you have the models to run 20 it might be better to spend your money elsewhere for the time being.

If you're playing strictly 1000 points I would use:

Allegiance: Death

Leaders:
- 1 Wight King with Baleful blade: 120 pts
- 1 Necromancer: 110 pts
- 1 Tomb Banshee: 80 pts

Battleline:
- 40 Skeleton Warriors with Ancient Blades or Spears: 280 pts
- 20 Skeleton Warriors with Ancient Blades or Spears: 160 pts

Other:

- 3 Spirit Hosts: 120 pts
- 3 Spirit Hosts: 120 pts

TOTAL: 990 pts

You could also drop 10 skeletons and the banshee for two cairn wraiths instead. OR, I know that you said you want to use skeletons and spirits but depending on how you feel about vampires, you could drop the 20 skeletons down to 10, drop the banshee and have a Vampire as your general and really focus your list around your big block of 40 skeletons and getting them to hammer things. Honestly there's lots and lots of options at 1000 points, GA: Death in small games is like a huge jigsaw puzzle you can fit so many different things into a small list.

Thanks for the advice, I thought writing a 1000 pts list at first would help me get a grasp of the game and its synergies easier but all it does is limiting my choice, considering there's so much models I want to include but so little points to put them in.

If you don't want to buy any more Skeletons at the moment, Zombies are indeed a good choice; but as others (and you yourself) have stated, you'd need a lot of them before they start pulling their weight in a battle. If you really just want to fill up your Battleline requirement, you could always go for a unit of Dire Wolves. They're not the greatest unit ever, but they're cheap, fast and could possibly stall an enemy unit long enough for your block of Skeletons to catch up with them. You'd also need just one box of them to make a functional unit.

Let's say you take one unit of 10 Dire Wolves, that would leave the core of your list looking like this:

Wight King
Necromancer

40 Skeleton Warriors
10 Dire Wolves

TOTAL: 630 points.

That leaves you some room to add units like the Grave Guard, Hexwraiths or Spirit Hosts. You also don't end up with a big unit of Zombies that you might not want to use a lot later on (as you mentioned you wanted to go for a more Skeleton/Spirit theme).

As for your other questions...

- Are the units above all effective or are some of them underperforming ? I'm not sure about the Spirit Hosts as I don't know any way to boost them, but their resilience looks nice I guess.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that while your Skeleton Warriors are good on the offense, they're not that great on the defence (if you don't have a Death hero sitting next to them; the trait works for every Hero, as far as I remember). Their save isn't great, so expect a bunch of them to die like flies to shooty armies and hard-hitting units or monsters. Having 40 of them does help, though.

Grave Guard hit hard, but suffer from the same problems as the Skeleton Warriors, while having slightly less survivability due to their banner bringing back only D3 of them each Hero phase.

Spirit Hosts are indeed very, very resilient. They're also rather fun to use, and can provide a useful distraction for your other units to get into position.

I haven't used any Hexwraiths yet, so I can't comment on those.

The Cairn Wraith is useful because it's a Hero you can summon, which is very handy for games where objectives can only be claimed by Heroes or Monsters.

- Is my list TAC enough?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: there's not much you can do about that. There are certain factions *cough*KhorneBloodbound*cough* who can get Monsters or Hero/Monsters for ridiculously low prices, and your list currently doesn't have much to deal with those. Your big blob of Skeleton Warriors will ward off those guys for a while, but that will make other, weaker units a prime target for them. You'd best swarm them with a bunch of units before they pick off your units one by one.


Hope that helps I've been struggling with Death lists myself, but maybe you'll have more succes than I've had

Hey I totally forgot about Direwolves being Battleline, I think I'll go with them for an easy second battleline slot for now. They're cheap enough, and they're fast. I probably won't be able to keep them alive with my Heroes due to the distance but they can certainly have some use.

I think one thing I lack indeed is a big damage-dealing unit, I thought about Crypt Horrors or Vargheists, as they're really the best in damage-dealing I can think of, barring named characters, Terrorgheists and the like. Thing is I never trusted big costly models in my games, be it in 40k or AoS, I feel they're always too fragile and you lose a good chunk of your army rather easily. I though about bringing a Mortis Engine in the list but I don't know if it would work well.

From what I can tell from the warscrolls, the Crypt Horrors seem slightly more useful, as they heal a wound each Hero Phase, and they can benefit from your Necromancer's Danse Macabre spell. Both the Crypt Horrors and the Vargheists don't really fit your theme of Skeletons and Spirits, though. One other (albeit slightly more expensive) option is to take the Morghast Harbringers or Archai; they hit hard, have decent saves, and are relatively fast.

I'm not sure about the Mortis Engine, it can pump out a lot of mortal wounds (and looks awesome), but I'm not sure how well it would survive combat. The Mortis Engine's alternate build, the Coven Throne, is pretty nice, too.

Spirit hosts can deal with a lot of different things to be fair, if you're dropping skeletons for wolves you have enough points to have 3 x 3 spirit hosts which should give you some flexibility in dealing with whatever is coming at you. Unfortunately death has a lot of outdated costs, mostly the big units/behemoths so it's not easy to fit those in to small lists. Skeletons and spirits do work well together though, but if you start throwing in 1 unit of varghiests, 1 unit of this, 1 unit of that then your list starts to lose synergy and you just have 4-5 different units all running around doing different things.