Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Im glad GW is finally bringing balance to Age of sigmar.

No more summoning armies for free , you have to pay the points of the warscrolls you want to summon and leave them in "reserves" until you finally summon them.
Nagash being 900 points means that in a 1000 pt game, you dont get to summon much with him and will rather have to rely on his other fighting abilities to win the game.

The three rules of one also specify that 2 different casters cannot cast the same spell in the same turn.
This will greatly alleviate the problem of spamming spell.

All in all , I think nagash is now balanced. Some people will cry while others will still say that 900 points is too low.
Only actual play will tell

My heart bleeds.

Sounds good to me. In effect it makes his inclusion predicated on the battle being large enough to merit his attention.

 Eldarain wrote:
Sounds good to me. In effect it makes his inclusion predicated on the battle being large enough to merit his attention.

Bingo. 900 points of 10,000 is a mere 9%

- Salvage

I disagree with this rule, it effectively makes undead useless

Nagash actually became the only viable mass summoner because everything he summons is effectively half cost (since he doubles the number of models). Also Flesh-Eater Courts might rejoice, if they don't get categorized as summons.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Nagash actually became the only viable mass summoner because everything he summons is effectively half cost (since he doubles the number of models). Also Flesh-Eater Courts might rejoice, if they don't get categorized as summons.

I would imagine in matched play you still have to pay points for those "doubled" units.

To the OP, I would say summoning got "capped" rather than nerfed. There are still loads of reasons and good tactics to do with summoning even if you have to pay points. The 1:1 ratio is good in my opinion too.

Nagash kind of ruined my smaller group from playing AoS. Kinda nice to see some...balancing. I'd put Gordrakk up against him now!

 Bottle wrote:

To the OP, I would say summoning got "capped" rather than nerfed. There are still loads of reasons and good tactics to do with summoning even if you have to pay points. The 1:1 ratio is good in my opinion too.

You'd have a point if the rule of one said 'cast once per turn' instead of 'attempted once per turn'.
Wizards only get to attempt to cast a single spell per turn. Add in the rule of one, and if you've paid to summon units you've held in reserve, that's a double nerf.

I don't see them factoring this into the points values because you get to choose whether to summon or deploy the unit. Given the intended competitive nature of the matched play format, summoning will become an interesting oddity.

The tournament gamers in my group said that summoning will never be anything they ever consider again with these rules. Take that for what its worth.

Then I would say your tournament players aren't utilising summoning to its potential at all.

Here's a scenario. Turn 1 Nagash first tries to summon some Morghast Harbingers - he needs a 7 on 2D6, but he gets +3 to his casting roll. If he sets them up he can do so 18" away from himself but more than 9" away from the enemy - so unless the enemy has deployed more than 3" back from their frontline he is going to be able to deploy them 9" away from the enemy.

He needs a 7, but the most common result on 2D6+3 is a ten, so it will usually go off. After that he receives +4 to summoning spells - meaning everything following has a high chance of going off. Summon some Morghast Archai next. Morghast Archai have a 3D6 charge range, so deploying them 9" away will most often see you successfully charge.

At this point you'll still have 3 spells to cast, so may as well get 2 Terrogiest (in range with their shooting spell), 2 zombie dragons and 2 of something else off. You're going to have a formidable army within 9" of the opponent on turn 1 before they have even played.

Scenario 2, you're playing an objective game to capture a centre terrain piece (so say it's 3" in radius it's going to be 9" away from your frontline and the edge facing the enemy will be 15" away from your frontline).

Turn 1 on a 5 (due to the +3) Nagash could set up 40 zombies in front of the terrain piece to block the opponent. On a 7 40 Skeletons or 12 Spirit Hosts.

If you're worried about those casting rolls still, you could add a Corpse Cart, a Mortis Engine or deploy around Arcane Scenery for pluses (all 3 would mean Nagash would have +6 to his roll!)

It's not the "free stuff" that makes summoning good. It's the 18" move, plus the ability to go first (as your deployed army is so much smaller), plus being able to react to enemy positions better.

Nagash is still good.

 Bottle wrote:
Then I would say your tournament players aren't utilising summoning to its potential at all.

Here's a scenario. Turn 1 Nagash first tries to summon some Morghast Harbingers - he needs a 7 on 2D6, but he gets +3 to his casting roll. If he sets them up he can do so 18" away from himself but more than 9" away from the enemy - so unless the enemy has deployed more than 3" back from their frontline he is going to be able to deploy them 9" away from the enemy.

He needs a 7, but the most common result on 2D6+3 is a ten, so it will usually go off. After that he receives +4 to summoning spells - meaning everything following has a high chance of going off. Summon some Morghast Archai next. Morghast Archai have a 3D6 charge range, so deploying them 9" away will most often see you successfully charge.

At this point you'll still have 3 spells to cast, so may as well get 2 Terrogiest (in range with their shooting spell), 2 zombie dragons and 2 of something else off. You're going to have a formidable army within 9" of the opponent on turn 1 before they have even played.

Scenario 2, you're playing an objective game to capture a centre terrain piece (so say it's 3" in radius it's going to be 9" away from your frontline and the edge facing the enemy will be 15" away from your frontline).

Turn 1 on a 5 (due to the +3) Nagash could set up 40 zombies in front of the terrain piece to block the opponent. On a 7 40 Skeletons or 12 Spirit Hosts.

If you're worried about those casting rolls still, you could add a Corpse Cart, a Mortis Engine or deploy around Arcane Scenery for pluses (all 3 would mean Nagash would have +6 to his roll!)

It's not the "free stuff" that makes summoning good. It's the 18" move, plus the ability to go first (as your deployed army is so much smaller), plus being able to react to enemy positions better.

Nagash is still good.

The idea isn't that Nagash is bad, its that the player here could have not taken him and just deployed them instead. While not as good as getting 'free' deployment (at the small but still present risk of not being deployed until later if the spell fails) the player could then use the points he would have paid for Nagash to bring more stuff. In other words; its not that Nagash is bad, but that he is worse than everything else. And this kind-of goes for summoning in general. Keep in mind every summon spell to deploy those units that have already been paid for in full could have been an arcane bolt, mystic shield, or warscroll-specific spell instead.

I say wait till the Generals Handbook comes out. Why? Who knows, maybe new war scrolls will come out and say certain models can summon for free. Maybe that is why Nagash is so much.

I got no proof for this, this is not a rumour, but just a guess that I could mostly be wrong. But who knows just because we get new points, we can also get new war scrolls as well. Yes it will suck and make the books obsolete that we just bought, but who knows what can happen now.

Interesting non the less.

One thing I did not think about.

The whole mechanic for summoning is not clear yet so maybe you just need to pay the cost of the warscroll to (unlock summoning this type of unit. turn 1 you go even by summoning the unit , but turn 2 ... guess what free units. :/

Yes,Nagash is nerfed but so is summoning across the board in this format.This is a good thing though.

I actually will be playing my Undead in the summer campaign,may even throw down Nagash now and then.I dont think hes useless at all,,he may be overpriced but time will tell on that.

The one thing im seeing when I read these rumors,that I think is very useful for the summoner despite the no resummoning and what not,is that the way I believe it will work is a player will allocate points to his "summoning pool",these of course will be deducted from his army list total.Now with that,the summoning player doesnt have to state what those points will be used for until the time comes to actually cast the spell...then the units cost is deducted from the existing total and so on.This allows a summoning player to cutomize their army composition turn one after seeing their opponents deployement,and often times will allow slow,speed 4 models to be deployed much further forward than they would have been able to otherwise.

In the case of Nagash,I would only be using him in 2k plus fights and likely would just start with him and the min core tax or some bubble wrap at game start.Then proceed to cast out a customized list of models/units to deal with the various threats im seeing.Now I dont have every Death model made,but I do have several options of all clasifications.

Also its been stated that banners that regen and models that can be brought back for whatever reason will still opperate as per their scroll rules with no points used in those situations.So this will help Death as well.

Summoning needed a nerf but this change in rules has take summoning from "must have" to "stay away"

There's legitimately no reason to summon now unless you want a janky "deep strike" unit for your army.

 rybackstun wrote:
Summoning needed a nerf but this change in rules has take summoning from "must have" to "stay away"

There's legitimately no reason to summon now unless you want a janky "deep strike" unit for your army.

I don't see what is so bad about deep striking in a unit that can shoot and assault like normal. This "janky deep strike" basically guarantees you get units across the table and into combat completely unharmed and exactly where you want them to be.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Then I would say your tournament players aren't utilising summoning to its potential at all.

Here's a scenario. Turn 1 Nagash first tries to summon some Morghast Harbingers - he needs a 7 on 2D6, but he gets +3 to his casting roll. If he sets them up he can do so 18" away from himself but more than 9" away from the enemy - so unless the enemy has deployed more than 3" back from their frontline he is going to be able to deploy them 9" away from the enemy.

He needs a 7, but the most common result on 2D6+3 is a ten, so it will usually go off. After that he receives +4 to summoning spells - meaning everything following has a high chance of going off. Summon some Morghast Archai next. Morghast Archai have a 3D6 charge range, so deploying them 9" away will most often see you successfully charge.

At this point you'll still have 3 spells to cast, so may as well get 2 Terrogiest (in range with their shooting spell), 2 zombie dragons and 2 of something else off. You're going to have a formidable army within 9" of the opponent on turn 1 before they have even played.

Scenario 2, you're playing an objective game to capture a centre terrain piece (so say it's 3" in radius it's going to be 9" away from your frontline and the edge facing the enemy will be 15" away from your frontline).

Turn 1 on a 5 (due to the +3) Nagash could set up 40 zombies in front of the terrain piece to block the opponent. On a 7 40 Skeletons or 12 Spirit Hosts.

If you're worried about those casting rolls still, you could add a Corpse Cart, a Mortis Engine or deploy around Arcane Scenery for pluses (all 3 would mean Nagash would have +6 to his roll!)

It's not the "free stuff" that makes summoning good. It's the 18" move, plus the ability to go first (as your deployed army is so much smaller), plus being able to react to enemy positions better.

Nagash is still good.

The idea isn't that Nagash is bad, its that the player here could have not taken him and just deployed them instead. While not as good as getting 'free' deployment (at the small but still present risk of not being deployed until later if the spell fails) the player could then use the points he would have paid for Nagash to bring more stuff. In other words; its not that Nagash is bad, but that he is worse than everything else. And this kind-of goes for summoning in general. Keep in mind every summon spell to deploy those units that have already been paid for in full could have been an arcane bolt, mystic shield, or warscroll-specific spell instead.

I think you're really underestimating how powerful a turn 1 18" move is. I have played against very strong summoning builds in Clash Comp where you pay a 1:1 ratio for your summoning pool.

If you have a game of objectives and those objectives are on the centre line across the board, Nagash can summon 5 doubled sized units (or 10 monsters) past the objectives to block the opponent advancement.

In tournament play, Summoning is a turn 1 strategy. You almost guarantee going first because your deployed army is so little. In turn 1 there isn't many spells that are useful to cast (you won't be in range for Arcane Bolt). It allows you to move a massive block of troops right into the enemy's face and can hopefully keep them tied up for 5 turns (standard game length) while your back units secure the objectives uncontested.

I haven't seen anything so am just going by what is said here.

I had wondered whether summoning might eventually be case of pay the points for them in a points based system, vs point the specific summoners according to capability. As stated here I think it sounds really bad, and that they have probably tried to nerf specific models (like Nagash) in a way that screws with other versions of summoned armies.

Sure Nagash (and the odd other unit) gets extremely predictable and hard to counter summoning, but a lot of others do not.

Here's a scenario. Turn 1 Nagash first tries to summon some Morghast Harbingers - he needs a 7 on 2D6, but he gets +3 to his casting roll. If he sets them up he can do so 18" away from himself but more than 9" away from the enemy - so unless the enemy has deployed more than 3" back from their frontline he is going to be able to deploy them 9" away from the enemy.

He needs a 7, but the most common result on 2D6+3 is a ten, so it will usually go off. After that he receives +4 to summoning spells - meaning everything following has a high chance of going off. Summon some Morghast Archai next. Morghast Archai have a 3D6 charge range, so deploying them 9" away will most often see you successfully charge.

Sure, now do that for a necromancer. He only gets to cast one spell, and that 7+ is 58% likely to go off, it is also potentially dispelled if he is within 18" of an enemy mage (forcing him away from the best locations). A summoner should be a high priority target so will be unlikely to be summoning all game or get forced further away from where he wants to be.

Only a few units have a good chance of charging with a good chance into combat straight after summoning, so again we seem to balancing for what is not a general issue in a way that does affect everything.

Stuff like Necromancers also have other useful spells they will be looking to cast. It is hardly a given they will even be in a good position where summoning is the thing to try.

I haven't seen the points system yet, or the victory conditions for what ever scenario they are intended to be used in. But for myself, at the moment, this sounds like a bad solution that hasn't been thought through. Paying for something that may never arrive needs to account for that fact. Sure there are advantages to the teleport in where you want, well not exactly where you want, but as it stands it sounds like you'd have to be basing around a very specific list with a clear intent to summon what you paid for and probably taking very specific stuff to summon. In other words, probably very quickly narrowing down to a few 'net lists'.

There seem to be 2 other ways of having handled this.

One would be, as noted above, cost the summoner for being able to summon. That of course doesn't work so well either, as then you pay for something you may never want to use, especially with stuff like a necro who doesn't directly get summoning.

The other way which feels better to me (personal opinion of course), is to go with what some thought was the rule early on. Make summoning 'free' etc, but that the stuff successfully summoned counts as immediate VP for the other guy. The more you summon the harder it gets to win on VP creates a nice in game cost/benefit question that doesn't force you to worry about list building and guessing what you might or might not want up front. Of course I'm a fan of stuff like that (why I like the underdog system in the GW event scenarios), anything that builds a balance mechanism into the Victory Conditions themselves whilst retaining freedom of army/unit choices rather than points invariably based around simple kill all battles and lists.

If you take Nagash, yes you will probably be going for a very specific heavy summoning strategy. As mentioned in my second scenario, it's not only about being able to charge turn 1, it's about being able to dominate board control on turn 1. (For example by filling the board up with Zombies, Skeletons and anything else).

There will still be lots of summoning builds and abilities to scale how much you use it. Arkhan is a toned down version of Nagash for example but even a Necromancer has his uses.

A Necromancer might summon a group of Zombies to get them up the board quickly. A unit of Zombies only walks 4"+D6 a turn so in two turns might only get 15" up the board. Instead the Necromancer can get them 18" up straight away to secure some board control.

In competitive games I see summoning as a turn 1 strategy. In turn 1 summoning goes uncontested and with buffs even powerful units and monsters can be very easy to summon. Why should they be cheaper when they are almost guaranteed to get on the board if you plan for it?

Everyone talking about summoning being unbinded or blocked by enemy movement is talking about late game summoning. And I agree it is not great for late game moves (except for deploying banshees) - summoning is something you do on turn 1.

Having the summoning pool not cost anything but be capped at a % of your total points at one time could have probably worked better with the other changes as well.

That way you can summon anything that fits into that cap, but not all at once either.

Summoning needed nerfing it was broken as heck, time will tell if this method is too severe.

In competitive games I see summoning as a turn 1 strategy. In turn 1 summoning goes uncontested and with buffs even powerful units and monsters can be very easy to summon. Why should they be cheaper when they are almost guaranteed to get on the board if you plan for it?

Everyone talking about summoning being unbinded or blocked by enemy movement is talking about late game summoning. And I agree it is not great for late game moves (except for deploying banshees) - summoning is something you do on turn 1.

Where do you get summoning on turn 1 is almost guaranteed? No spell is guaranteed for the vast majority of summoners, a 7+spell is 58%. Far from a guarantee. Stuff that needs a 10+ is even less. Most stuff that will increase your chance will just cost even more points. In this system the lower level summoners have nothing mitigating that much reduced chance of casting. If you are paying for the big stuff no matter what then maybe all summoning should be at a fixed cast chance - making big stuff harder to cast and also more expensive to take at the same time is as broken for the not-Nagash as it is currently stands for the Nagashes.

Without that guarantee casting then spending points on stuff to summon will take that mechanic largely out of the game bar a couple of boring (once you've seen it for the 100th time) builds.



I still say the nicest solution IMHO is the something along the lines of:

Victory Conditions (assuming we are talking some simple battle scenario, points of this type generally don't work well beyond those):
:
You score VP equal to the value of what you killed + the difference in army value ( for the one with the smaller army value).
Army value = points of the army you deployed plus the value of what you summoned.

This means the Nagash can summon a crap load of stuff if he wants, but every time he does he pushes victory further away. He has to balance his summoning with going too far so that the other guy easily wins for fighting such an unequal match. Nagash can mitigate that too some extent by deploying on his own to reduce his starting army value, so that overall he uses no more than maybe what the enemy had even after summoning.

The simple Necromancer on the other hand is also now good to go. He hasn't been forced into some arbitrary pre game points penalty for trying to summon that big monster that will only turn up 1 in 6 times. If he goes for it and succeeds, then yes he is penalized in the same way Nagash was, if he fails then he wasn't penalized beyond the opportunity cost of not casting another spell. He can still go for summoned zombies and other such stuff, again facing the same penalty as Nagash - he took an easy spell to cast and got it off but also gives up the VP.

The non summoner is also fine, He took the points allowed (or less!) and whilst he can't summon he knows that if the summoner summons he gets free VPs. Taking less than max points at game start gives him extra VP as well, which is another way he gets to counter the summoner - he can make on the fly deployment decisions to match facing a summoning army and altering the maths the summoner has to work on.

Yes, it's risky to summon big monsters with a Necromancer. It's strategically bad in a competitive game. A Necromancer can summon Zombies 91.66% of the time. With Arcane Scenery close by that increases to 97.22% (with only snake eyes resulting in a fail).

Should zombies be cheaper to summon because 8.33% of time it will fail - when the other 91.66% of the time you get an 18" move with them?

I don't think so.

Your suggestion is boring as it only works for VP games. There will be 6 scenarios for Matched Play and I very much doubt they will all be VP win conditions.

I hope they are all not VP win conditions... i really hope not.

In the Heelanhammer podcast there was the story about one scenario not working so Jervis went away and came back with another one. I doubt it was a VP scenario that wasn't working and then Jervis threw it in the bin and came back with a VP scenario to try instead :p

I think we're safe! I am actually hoping none of the scenarios will be VP.

Yes, it's risky to summon big monsters with a Necromancer. It's strategically bad in a competitive game. A Necromancer can summon Zombies 91.66% of the time. With Arcane Scenery close by that increases to 97.22% (with only snake eyes resulting in a fail).

Off the of of my head I can think of stuff that has summoning cast on anything between 4-10 before mods. At what point does something become strategically bad? 7+ is not for big monsters generally, but is far less certain. It isn't a simple binary choice, but one where chance is getting worse, but what you summon getting (generalizing) better. There are what probably amounts to thousands of points on the matrix of how good something is to go for, is the strategically bad choice delimited by some clear line across it? This side is good, this side is bad?

It also of course heavily dependent on context. Risk vs Reward always is. Will you go for the Terrorgeist on turn 1 with only a 1 in 6 chance or the zombies with a 33/36 chance. That decision, and whether it is good or bad early on before anything much has happened is very different to say turn 3 if you are losing badly and your choice is more zombies which will have no affect on the outcome or a terrorgeist which could swing it back your way. A high probably of achieving nothing useful is far inferior to the low probability of pulling it back. At that point the zombies are the bad decision.

If you have to pay full price for stuff before you even start playing then those decisions will not even exist.

Should zombies be cheaper to summon because 8.33% of time it will fail - when the other 91.66% of the time you get an 18" move with them?

The obvious counter point is should some thing that will only summon 1 in 6 be full price?

You're suggestion is boring as it only works for VP games. There will be 6 scenarios for Matched Play and I very much doubt they will all be VP win conditions.

I'll be interested in what they are. Certainly VP are not the only way to do winning. However, almost every style of competitive version of a wargame can be done as a VP version without fundamentally altering what it is about. Fighting over the tower on the hill could be done by who occupies it at game end, or it could be done by VP at game end (or even per turn) making it very hard to ignore, whilst also allowing for VP adjustments for uneven armies (and summons).

The current GW event scenarios for example all use VP, even though what you are looking to achieve is potentially different each time. It has board control, building control, occupy enemy half, kill, assasinate etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I think we're safe! I am actually hoping none of the scenarios will be VP.

I'm intrigued with what you think is wrong with how you calculate victory, so long as the game is about what you were looking to achieve?

I'm not sure whether you have some specific scenario in mind, but for example what is fundamentally different between these 2?

2000 pt game. Victor is the one who occupies the tower at game end.

2000pt game. Occupying the tower is worth 2000VP at game end.


For a straight up equal points game the only way to win in both is occupy the tower, and the affect is the same. The second may look odd in isolation, but it then allows for VP to be awarded for other things. If 2000pts are used by each player then it doesn't matter about the VP you achieved for killing stuff (if that would give VP), as the VP for the tower dwarfs that score.

However, you can give the smaller player bonus points for the army size difference and now the kills do count, and the larger side has to take the tower whilst keeping casualties lower.

It also, more relevant here, allows for summoning to give away VP as noted above. So that the more you summon the more you have take the tower with minimal losses.

A lot of good points have been made for pro and against summoning. Thing is all the facts being used to support your theory "can" be moot since the rules can change on how summoning works.

Or am I wrong that the rules are not going to change and only points are going to be added in? I thought the rules are changing as well as points being casted, so it's a wait and see what happens.

Who knows, maybe summoned units can't move or at least can't assault the turn they come in when summoned.

puree wrote:


If you have to pay full price for stuff before you even start playing then those decisions will not even exist.

100% don't agree. There's still lots of decision to be made. However if I was going to bring only Necromancers, I wouldn't bring Zombie Dragons to be summoned up. You think about your turn 1 strategy, how you want it to play out and you build an army that can best do that. If I want monsters summoned up, I don't rely on Necromancers to do it.

Should zombies be cheaper to summon because 8.33% of time it will fail - when the other 91.66% of the time you get an 18" move with them?

The obvious counter point is should some thing that will only summon 1 in 6 be full price?

Yes. Because it's only 1/6 for a non-buffed Necromancer. It's 58.33% chance for Nagash, going up to 72.22% for free if there is Arcane Scenery around. Easily going up to 97.22% if A Mortis Engine, Corpse Cart and Morghast Harbingers are nearby.

If we were to see reduced points costs for summoned models we're more likely to see a smaller variety of lists because everyone just takes the list that can get the most "free points" on the table turn 1.

I'm not sure whether you have some specific scenario in mind, but for example what is fundamentally different between these 2?

2000 pt game. Victor is the one who occupies the tower at game end.

2000pt game. Occupying the tower is worth 2000VP at game end.

They are both the same.

It's a straight up kill match that is boring.

 Bottle wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Then I would say your tournament players aren't utilising summoning to its potential at all.

Here's a scenario. Turn 1 Nagash first tries to summon some Morghast Harbingers - he needs a 7 on 2D6, but he gets +3 to his casting roll. If he sets them up he can do so 18" away from himself but more than 9" away from the enemy - so unless the enemy has deployed more than 3" back from their frontline he is going to be able to deploy them 9" away from the enemy.

He needs a 7, but the most common result on 2D6+3 is a ten, so it will usually go off. After that he receives +4 to summoning spells - meaning everything following has a high chance of going off. Summon some Morghast Archai next. Morghast Archai have a 3D6 charge range, so deploying them 9" away will most often see you successfully charge.

At this point you'll still have 3 spells to cast, so may as well get 2 Terrogiest (in range with their shooting spell), 2 zombie dragons and 2 of something else off. You're going to have a formidable army within 9" of the opponent on turn 1 before they have even played.

Scenario 2, you're playing an objective game to capture a centre terrain piece (so say it's 3" in radius it's going to be 9" away from your frontline and the edge facing the enemy will be 15" away from your frontline).

Turn 1 on a 5 (due to the +3) Nagash could set up 40 zombies in front of the terrain piece to block the opponent. On a 7 40 Skeletons or 12 Spirit Hosts.

If you're worried about those casting rolls still, you could add a Corpse Cart, a Mortis Engine or deploy around Arcane Scenery for pluses (all 3 would mean Nagash would have +6 to his roll!)

It's not the "free stuff" that makes summoning good. It's the 18" move, plus the ability to go first (as your deployed army is so much smaller), plus being able to react to enemy positions better.

Nagash is still good.

The idea isn't that Nagash is bad, its that the player here could have not taken him and just deployed them instead. While not as good as getting 'free' deployment (at the small but still present risk of not being deployed until later if the spell fails) the player could then use the points he would have paid for Nagash to bring more stuff. In other words; its not that Nagash is bad, but that he is worse than everything else. And this kind-of goes for summoning in general. Keep in mind every summon spell to deploy those units that have already been paid for in full could have been an arcane bolt, mystic shield, or warscroll-specific spell instead.

I think you're really underestimating how powerful a turn 1 18" move is. I have played against very strong summoning builds in Clash Comp where you pay a 1:1 ratio for your summoning pool.

If you have a game of objectives and those objectives are on the centre line across the board, Nagash can summon 5 doubled sized units (or 10 monsters) past the objectives to block the opponent advancement.

In tournament play, Summoning is a turn 1 strategy. You almost guarantee going first because your deployed army is so little. In turn 1 there isn't many spells that are useful to cast (you won't be in range for Arcane Bolt). It allows you to move a massive block of troops right into the enemy's face and can hopefully keep them tied up for 5 turns (standard game length) while your back units secure the objectives uncontested.

Thing is, deploying those monsters (for the same price) removes the risk of a failed summoning, and for units like terrorgheists or morghasts most of that 18" will be reclaimed by their regular move anyway. I play Slaanesh, I can pretty much always pull a turn 1 charge if I want but I usually don't because its a tactically poor decision; it breaks your army into smaller chunks that are easier for the enemy to deal with. But the biggest flaw with the 'summon forwards' strategy is that you have to be 9" away. This means that if you start 24" apart then the 'free move' is actually just 15" and if your opponent goes first then moves forward then this becomes even smaller. This also gives your opponent some control over where the summons get deployed (in fact I have used this exact tactic against Nagash before). All of this isn't crippling, but when those summons could have been deployed normally for the exact same cost it makes summoning the less attractive option. Couple this with a summoner who isn't Nagash and has a much larger chance of failure...