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.

I have not gotten my hands on the book, but being quite excited to play my daemons I would like to know as soon as I can.

A far as I know you choose not to deploy something and can then summon that thing's point value in whatever?
Can you simply leave points fro summoning in a list?
Also does summoning something from another faction remove the benefits you get from having only one faction (like summoning Slaanesh daemons into my all Tzeentch army)?
Finally, can I get around the force organization using summoning (e.g. choose not to deploy a battle line unit and summon a behemoth instead)?

Thank in advance.

From my brief read yesterday it goes something like this
A 1000pt battle
deploy 750 pts then
you have 250 pts for your summoned units

As to the the alligence i think that your written list is your only advailable summons's so if your list is all slannesh thats it's alegence but if your list has some tzeench in there your a chaos aligence.
as to the org again you only summon from your list.

This may be subject to change as i only got a brief read and i could of miss remembered.

1- you put points in a reinforcement pool.

2- you cast a summoning spell (warscrolls will tell you which units can be summoned)or use an ability that adds a unit to your force. (The unit does not have to be part of your army roster at the begining of the game.

3- you pay the points cost for the unit being summoned from your reinforcement pool

4- if you dont have enough points, the unit cannot be summoned, the spell/ability still counts as being used this turn.

ex: I want so summon a bloodthirster.
all chaos wizards know the summon bloodthirster spell. I roll a 10 and sucessfully summon the blood thirster.
I deduct its unit price from my reinforcement pool then place the model on the table as the description on the warscroll says. (summoned units dont have to respect the force organisation chart so this is a clever way of having more behemoths/leaders than you could normally have at the beginig of a game.

I thought you had to have a unit in your list for your other wizards to know the summon spell. Or does every sorcerer know how to summon anything that on its warscoll says it can be summoned?

If a warscroll says : all chaos wizards know the summon bloodthirster spell.
Then as long as you have a unit with the keywords chaos and wizard , you can summon this warscroll from your reinforcement pool.

 Hulksmash wrote:
I thought you had to have a unit in your list for your other wizards to know the summon spell. Or does every sorcerer know how to summon anything that on its warscoll says it can be summoned?

Answered in the Age of Sigmar FAQ (pg. 5, top of the second column). The answer is that you do not need to have models from the warscroll in your army in order to use the summoning spell.

I went and read page 108 today. And it is super clear. Any ability that adds a new unit has to be paid for out of your reinforcement points. So not only summoning spells but also abilities that add new units like Neferata's ability to create a new Vampire Lord everytime she slays a hero.

Any ability that adds a new unit must be paid for. If you can't pay the amount you can reduce the amount of models to a payable amount and if you still can't afford it, you get nada.

So entirely new units and not adding to units then. So the flesheater courts vargulfs ability wouldn't cost but the ghoul king ones would. That's workable.

With bolstering exisiting units, it is free but the unit can never become larger than its starting size.

Another example is a lot of undead banners. Get d6 skeletons back to the unit, that's points free for that. But yea never goes higher then max

How do you possibly pay points for an ability that creates a vampire lord every time she slays a hero. There's no guarantee she'll slay any, or she could end up killing 12 of them.

I'm not arguing against it, I just don't see how you could ever get a points value that made sense for that. It would almost always be inaccurate or unfair. Seems like something that should be incorporated into her model cost.

AncientSkarbrand wrote:
How do you possibly pay points for an ability that creates a vampire lord every time she slays a hero. There's no guarantee she'll slay any, or she could end up killing 12 of them.

I'm not arguing against it, I just don't see how you could ever get a points value that made sense for that. It would almost always be inaccurate or unfair. Seems like something that should be incorporated into her model cost.

You don't buy the models with points before the game, you set aside "reinforcement points". If a vampire costs 200 points and you have 200 remaining reinforcement points when Neferata slays a hero you can choose to spend the points to create a new Vampire Lord as per the ability. If Neferata doesn't get the chance to slay a hero you can instead use those points for something else (Like 2 units of Zombies or such).

 Bottle wrote:
With bolstering exisiting units, it is free but the unit can never become larger than its starting size.

Is there a place in the General's Handbook that says that? As it's not part of the rule like the skeleton banners are (where it says return and not add models to the unit).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bottle wrote:

AncientSkarbrand wrote:
How do you possibly pay points for an ability that creates a vampire lord every time she slays a hero. There's no guarantee she'll slay any, or she could end up killing 12 of them.

I'm not arguing against it, I just don't see how you could ever get a points value that made sense for that. It would almost always be inaccurate or unfair. Seems like something that should be incorporated into her model cost.

You don't buy the models with points before the game, you set aside "reinforcement points". If a vampire costs 200 points and you have 200 remaining reinforcement points when Neferata slays a hero you can choose to spend the points to create a new Vampire Lord as per the ability. If Neferata doesn't get the chance to slay a hero you can instead use those points for something else (Like 2 units of Zombies or such).

Additionally he's not referencing the point cost for the summoned unit. He's saying the points in the characters original total would be permanently off if this was the way it was done. Which I agree with but also understand the hard and fast "if it's a new unit" thing even if I don't agree with it.

It's on page 108 - it explains that bolstering units cannot exceed the unit's starting size in Matched Play.

As for effectively costing Neferata when she could or could not create a vampire hero, seems no different to having to cost a Necromancer that could or could not summon a zombie dragon.

The advantage of summoning and like abilities is the in-game options; they are Schrodinger's points that can be any model until you actually spend them. Not only is this good for countering what your opponent puts down but you can pick the ideal unit for whatever scenario you are in or even just for the circumstance that turn.

I'm highly doubtful that this is the only summoning system AoS will see. I think that summoning is going to have to be tested and balanced until a system that can be found that is neither overpowered (the default system) nor underpowered (the General's Handbook on paper).

I don't want to derail this thread, but the summoning rules as a competitive tool are perfectly fine as they are in the matched play rules. You get a host of benefits for summoning a unit but a risk with the roll and area denial from the opponent. If you decide it's too risky then you deploy the unit instead.

I think the problem is people hear 'summoning' and think of it as a means of adding to the existing army, the term itself conjures an image of a crooked old mage holding off drawing up an army of ghostly whatever to swarm and overwhelm our intrepid heroes.

As it stands, summoning in matched play is a reserves system, a safer deep-strike. But it does have the added bonus that you could, for example, field 1500 points worth of units at a 2000 game, then pick and choose the remaining 500 points from a massive sideboard depending on what you need to counter the opponent... Or am I missing something?

Yep sure, and if you want to play the old crooked Necromancer summoning up a horde of Zombies every turn, that's what Narrative and Open play is for in my opinion. For Matched Play you need to look at the strongest way it can be used and that is with reliable casters, launching nasty units 15-18" up the board on battleround 1 to smash the opponent and comp it accordingly.

My problem with it is if I am playing Skaven with a Screaming Bell, I either have to be playing at a ~300 point deficit to my opponent, or just accept that the bell does nothing if I roll a 12. I guess Skaven have always been about really big gambles...

How does this work for unit summons less than the minimum size? If Lord Skreech Verminking summons 4 stormvermin with The Dreaded Thirteenth, does it require me to have set aside 140 points (cost of 10 stormvermin), or does it drain just a prorated 56 points from my summoning pool?

Laughatdo0m wrote:
My problem with it is if I am playing Skaven with a Screaming Bell, I either have to be playing at a ~300 point deficit to my opponent, or just accept that the bell does nothing if I roll a 12. I guess Skaven have always been about really big gambles...

How does this work for unit summons less than the minimum size? If Lord Skreech Verminking summons 4 stormvermin with The Dreaded Thirteenth, does it require me to have set aside 140 points (cost of 10 stormvermin), or does it drain just a prorated 56 points from my summoning pool?

You have to pay the 140 points. It makes some abilities terrible, like the 2D6 Dryads the Branchwraith can summon.

I'm actually loving this new system. It offers quite a bit in the way of tactical flexibility.

I think this rule is garbage.

The only interesting way of using it I can think of, is to summon more behemoth that would be normally allowed. But still, you'd have to make them fit in the points pool.

I'm trying to work out if it gets you access to the pre-game Triumph Table matched play has for the underdog or if points set aside for reinforcements count towards your army total to begin with.

I think the intent of this rule is great, you can reinforce and bring units back from the dead, but you cannot be cheese and spawn a bunch of MCs.

The other thing to note is that by starting undersized you do get a pretty nice advantage, D3 roll where you can get reroll hits, wound, or saves for your whole army.

My first thought is I could see a tournament format where you bring an army list of X points, and are allowed to summon an extra Y points during a game. Could have an option to subtract from X to add to Y if you wanted as well. Summoning would still give you extra, but be finite.

 Bottle wrote:
I'm trying to work out if it gets you access to the pre-game Triumph Table matched play has for the underdog or if points set aside for reinforcements count towards your army total to begin with.

Seeing as it is an allocation of points, I don't think so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haechi wrote:
The only interesting way of using it I can think of, is to summon more behemoth that would be normally allowed. But still, you'd have to make them fit in the points pool.

I'm not sure if RAW allows this. "An army" must have the correct organization, I don't see anywhere where is makes a distinction between the army on the table and your list.

 DarkBlack wrote:

 Haechi wrote:
The only interesting way of using it I can think of, is to summon more behemoth that would be normally allowed. But still, you'd have to make them fit in the points pool.

I'm not sure if RAW allows this. "An army" must have the correct organization, I don't see anywhere where is makes a distinction between the army on the table and your list.

So if I have a Battleline unit removed as casualties and I no longer have the required number of Battleline units do I automatically lose? You check your army composition during listbuilding, not during the game.

 DarkBlack wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
I'm trying to work out if it gets you access to the pre-game Triumph Table matched play has for the underdog or if points set aside for reinforcements count towards your army total to begin with.

Seeing as it is an allocation of points, I don't think so.

Seems likely. I'll need to sit down with the GHB for longer to confirm.

 Haechi wrote:
I think this rule is garbage.

The only interesting way of using it I can think of, is to summon more behemoth that would be normally allowed. But still, you'd have to make them fit in the points pool.

I disagree. You're basically sacrificing starting points for the ability to pick the unit you need in any given game, with the added bonus that you can summon them upfield instead of in your DZ. There is the downside that it might get unbound or failed, but it's still a decision to make - Do I build a list that has built in, straightforward synergy, or do I have weaker early turns in exchange for the ability to summon the exact thing I need to be strong against this specific opponent?