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.

Just had my first game against them and OMG it was like playing a fluffy scenario where you're meant to lose. Everything kept coming back, he got free units, he could replace losses in elite units, his stuff could fly, he did a load of mortal wounds, he got an armywide ward save on top of average armour and high wounds. So he pretty much ignored all of the damage I was doing.

I could get if, like his ghouls were worse than my dryads (which I am not allowed to summon much less get a full size unit for free). Or if his guys weren't as good as my Kurnoth hunters (which can't just instantly replace dead models). I mean he seemed to go all sourpus at the idea of me using Alarielle even though he had clearly stacked various buffs to make the army unkillable.


I don't know exactly what he took, it was

Some ghoul king.

A big hunched monster

8 flying bat monsters led by a bat monster character

8 giant ghoul type things

A terrorgheist

15 ghouls

Plus his free units

I took

Treelord Ancient

32 Dryads

9 Kurnoth hunters 3 with each weapon type.

Pretty much the only unit that did well were the hunters with scythes which killed the Gheist. Though honestly I was quite prepared for him to say that would come back by that point in the battle.

Its far from the strongest Syl army I could make but what shocked me is that points wise, my army was actually more expensive than his, purely because of the Ancient and the Dryads being eye wateringly expensive for what they actually do.

So yeah, he's clearly "that guy". I mean it says a lot when he says "this army is beatable." instead of "I am beatable". I mean what is that armies downside exactly?

This might all change next week when the Generals Handbook comes out. Not sure how the "units keep coming back" have to have points paid for or not or if there are other rules that can nerf this so it's not so strong.

I guess people who have seen the Generals Handbook will be able to answer this better.

Davor wrote:
This might all change next week when the Generals Handbook comes out. Not sure how the "units keep coming back" have to have points paid for or not or if there are other rules that can nerf this so it's not so strong.

I guess people who have seen the Generals Handbook will be able to answer this better.

Well strictly speaking we were playing with the generals handbook just using wounds to determine the scale. His view was that these were abilities and outside the scope of true summoning.

Isn't it "known" already that summoning spells need to be paid for using the army points, but abilities does not need to be paid for extra, but may not make a unit go above its starting size?

In his case, that would mean no free units. Would that have changed the battle in any way you think?

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Davor wrote:
This might all change next week when the Generals Handbook comes out. Not sure how the "units keep coming back" have to have points paid for or not or if there are other rules that can nerf this so it's not so strong.

I guess people who have seen the Generals Handbook will be able to answer this better.

Well strictly speaking we were playing with the generals handbook just using wounds to determine the scale. His view was that these were abilities and outside the scope of true summoning.

You were cheated. :-p

A few of us here argued the same for a minute, but it ultimately has become clear that the official ruling is...

1. If it brings in a new unit where there wasn't one, its summoning... period.
2. If it replenishes a unit, it isn't summoning, but can never exceed the model-count the unit was paid to include at list-building.

Attilla wrote:
Isn't it "known" already that summoning spells need to be paid for using the army points, but abilities does not need to be paid for extra, but may not make a unit go above its starting size?

In his case, that would mean no free units. Would that have changed the battle in any way you think?

He never made a unit go over its original size. The problem was that he was using some ability that every model regained a wound a turn and some other ability that meant he could almost always replace whatever he lost. The issue is that neither of these units were cheap fodder like zombies. These were his elite heavy hitters and hard enough to kill anyway. That basically meant he simply ignored entire turns worth of damage.

He used the ability once and it cost me a unit of 16 dryads to try and defeat that one unit of ghouls he got for free.

Oh yeah and all "Undead" being bravery 10 is stupid. Older fantasy they had limitations where if you killed the Vampire or Tomb Priedt the army started to crumble. I asked and apparently there is zero negative. Because apparently a tree feels fear but a cannibal doesn't...

Plus the armywide 5 plus ward save is just dirt.

Welcome to the bitterness I feel for lizardmen.

I'm not sure how accurate it is but my friend plays flesheaters and apparently most of the buffs depend on the ghoul king living so sniping him early is a good idea.

Well, your biggest mistake was using wounds to balance. (But still seems like you had way less wounds without adding it up).

Play with proper points next time for a better game

Page 108 is super clear about the rules. It's not just "summoning" that requires points but anything that adds a new unit. Sounds like he was playing within the rules in that regards.

I have played Flesh Eater courts before and know it's the "courtier" characters that allow them to replenish fallen models. Just shot them dead with your Kurnoth hunters with bows.

Let us know how your next game goes

Basically what bottle said. Aim for the leaders... They replenish the units.

If he's creating new units "for free" in pitched battles, he's cheating. It's not just spells that summon that require reserve points. There's no such thing as "free units" when playing pitched battles.

But yeah, if you fail to take out the leaders in Flesh-eater armies, you are in for a rough time.

A few things though... If you were using points: those 8 man units would cost the same as 9 man units, the 15 ghoul unit would cost the same as 20 ghouls etc.

Ask your opponent to tone back his list. Despite what people may think even the GHB points aren't very balanced. They are an excellent guideline but the moment someone tries to min-max they break. Fast. To get good matchups players are still going to need to bring a roughly equal level of competitiveness in their lists. But that's exactly where the GHB shines; unlike before it is relatively easy so scale lists up an down.

Yeah I have noticed at my store that there's some hyper competitive armies out there. I mean it's 2/3 death ATM almost entirely on the back of two or three power gaming death armies despite a majority of Order armies. Which, yeah...

I didn't count how many monsters he had in each unit and it was a few days ago. It may have been less but they were chunky units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ask your opponent to tone back his list. Despite what people may think even the GHB points aren't very balanced. They are an excellent guideline but the moment someone tries to min-max they break. Fast. To get good matchups players are still going to need to bring a roughly equal level of competitiveness in their lists. But that's exactly where the GHB shines; unlike before it is relatively easy so scale lists up an down.

That might work at a club where everyone is friends. I mean we have a big heresy group and a bunch of new people joined and they've been pretty leaned on not to take death star and primarch lists because the focus is big troop heavy armies and narrative play. But even then, there's one guy who isn't playing ball and it's one reason we can't start a heresy campaign (I think they tad harsh) until he changes his ways. I mean as an example my friend has Iron Warriors and he stopped using his thud guns every match because they are death and he likes people.

But if somebody is looking for a game as asks you for one. It's kind of impolite to say "I won't play your army, it's dirt". So to then ask them to change their army isn't going to get a lot of support. I think they'd just be offended.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Yeah I have noticed at my store that there's some hyper competitive armies out there. I mean it's 2/3 death ATM almost entirely on the back of two or three power gaming death armies despite a majority of Order armies. Which, yeah...

I didn't count how many monsters he had in each unit and it was a few days ago. It may have been less but they were chunky units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ask your opponent to tone back his list. Despite what people may think even the GHB points aren't very balanced. They are an excellent guideline but the moment someone tries to min-max they break. Fast. To get good matchups players are still going to need to bring a roughly equal level of competitiveness in their lists. But that's exactly where the GHB shines; unlike before it is relatively easy so scale lists up an down.

That might work at a club where everyone is friends. I mean we have a big heresy group and a bunch of new people joined and they've been pretty leaned on not to take death star and primarch lists because the focus is big troop heavy armies and narrative play. But even then, there's one guy who isn't playing ball and it's one reason we can't start a heresy campaign (I think they tad harsh) until he changes his ways. I mean as an example my friend has Iron Warriors and he stopped using his thud guns every match because they are death and he likes people.

But if somebody is looking for a game as asks you for one. It's kind of impolite to say "I won't play your army, it's dirt". So to then ask them to change their army isn't going to get a lot of support. I think they'd just be offended.

Well, I would phrase it more like this (after seeing what the army is composed of) "Hey that looks a little too competitive for me to match up against, could you tone it back a little?" However, I know that sort of thing isn't always a reasonable option, in which case I can only suggest that you use PPC points instead (see my sig) since they are balanced. And there's no need to use anything else from the comp; use Matched Play from the GHB, but swapping out the point values (and ignoring the bit about the summoning spells).

I don't think you should ask him to tone down his list straight away. You have only played him once right? Do you not enjoy the challenge of trying to up your game and beat a tough opponent? Give it another shot - make sure you are using proper points costings, ask him which characters are the ones replenishing the units and snipe them - or play for the objective.

Give it a few more tries before dismissing the army as impossible to beat or too strong, in my opinion. Alternatively if you already know competetive play isn't for you (and that's more than fine) suggest a game of narrative or open play. Choose a scenario that puts him on the back foot and if you have a bad game again suggest giving your army a handicap next time you two play eachother.

Well competitive play should be where you have two equal sides and the deciding factor is luck and the commanders judgement. One side having a straight up advantage isn't really competitive.

I prefer narrative driven games. I would play games at my club with my mates, but none of them collect AoS stuff. So I have to game with strangers.

Points are never going to guarantee a fair fight on their own. But it does give you the same framework and limits to work under. Are you going to cry foul and call his army unbeatable after one defeat or instead aim to improve your list, your tactics, your understanding of how his army operates and aim to beat him next time?

Based on what you have listed, Generals Handbook points are the following:

Some ghoul king - 100 points
A big hunched monster (Varghulf presumably?) - 160 points
8 flying bat monsters led by a bat monster character (Crypt Flayers + Crypt Infernal Courtier) - 480 + 140
8 giant ghoul type things (Crypt Horrors) - 420
A terrorgheist - 320
15 ghouls - 200 points
Plus his free units - Reinforcement pool (??? points)

Total: 1820 points, not including any left over points, presumably at least 100 points if he summoned a unit of ghouls

Your list:

Treelord Ancient - 300 points
32 Dryads - 480 points (enough to actually get a unit of 40 models...)
9 Kurnoth hunters 3 with each weapon type - 540 points

Total: 1320 points.

Hard to win when your opponent has kind of 50% more points than you... Also, as other have mentioned deploying a new unit through whatever mechanism comes from reinforcement points set aside at the start of the game.

With another 600 points you could chuck in a Spirit of Durthu for some close combat quality, a Free Spirits Battalion to get a bit more speed for him and your Hunters as well as another Artefact, and a unit of tree revenants for teleporting, or a brachwych for more magic.

In terms of tactics, with Death in general and definitely for Flesh Eaters you need to target the characters as quickly and as hard as possible. The 5+ ignore roll, the return of models, passive performance buffs, are all dependent on characters so you need to focus on them. With Sylvaneth you should be able to do that - place wyldwoods around and then teleport your guys closer to his characters, focus your ranged attacks, focus on damage spells.

The problem is that he was basically hanging back out of range of my bows. I was able to deploy a wildwood in his deployment zone, but he simply had a unit deploy in it and stop me moving stuff out of it. I forgot that he takes auto wounds on a 1 for doing this and I couldn't afford the two extra citadel woods that legally make up that free wildwood. Plus I imagined he would object to me doing that and filling a full map quarter with trees.

I did teleport a unit of sword Kurnoth out to try and nab one of his leaders, they failed their charge twice on one of his leaders. They then got dogpiled by three units. I was never in a position to hit the Ghoul King with my K Bows and kept rolling one for my teleport ability so was never able to reposition them. I also rolled a one for my scythes as I had wanted to move both my sword and scythe into the fight. He had the guy hidden behind a wood. Basically a lot of my army either turned out to be worthless like the Ancient and Dryads or underperformed like the sword and bow Kurnoth. So really I had three units of Kurnoth hunters, one of which was never in a position to snipe his leaders. So I really felt like i only had two units in play, my Dryads were so badly outclassed. Everything else was just a points sink and his 5 plus save kept nerfing what damage I was doing to him. Two of his characters should have died but didn't because of regen (he also had a ring of immortality) One of whom looked exactly like a normal guy, the flying bat thing, so I never knew until late game that he wasn't part of the squad.

I think he said the army was about 1650. He probably had about 5-6 in those big monster squads.

I've got some new stuff so if I had to play that guy again I would probably drop the Dryads for Alarielle and Drycha. Put three citdel woods in his deployment zone to make it impossible for him to use his own deployment zone. Replace the Ancient with Durthu and turn his ghoul king into a tree. I also would probably take another unit of bows and play defensively.



How tough is the ghoul king? I might do some mathhammer to see how much it will take to put him down. Wounds, armour, ward save?







Automatically Appended Next Post:
Okay just did the math.

If the ghoul king has 6 wounds, a 4 plus save and a 5+ ward save and he regens D3 a turn then I need to put him down in a single round.

To guarantee that I would need roughly 3 units of Kurnoth bows to do an average of 5.98 wounds.

Yeah...I am not seeing this guy being easy to put down.


I mean maybe if Alarielle cast three of her metamorphisis powers on him. That would average about 7 wounds roughly.

I just don't think getting into CC with him is viable if hes going to be bubblewrapped by nasty enemy units.

Seeing as he played summoning wrong and had 50% more points than you, I think you should give it a couple of more tries. Also, it seems he is using an illegal list as he only have 1 unit of ghouls (battleline unit) and using the Death allegiance. If he wants to use Death allegiance special rules and magical artifacts, he needs to follow the battleline requirements for Death, not Flesh Eater Courts.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Okay just did the math.

If the ghoul king has 6 wounds, a 4 plus save and a 5+ ward save and he regens D3 a turn then I need to put him down in a single round.

To guarantee that I would need roughly 3 units of Kurnoth bows to do an average of 5.98 wounds.

Yeah...I am not seeing this guy being easy to put down.


I mean maybe if Alarielle cast three of her metamorphisis powers on him. That would average about 7 wounds roughly.

I just don't think getting into CC with him is viable if hes going to be bubblewrapped by nasty enemy units.

Mortal Wounds are the best way to snipe out characters. If you have the capability to bring multiple Wizards with good spells, you can drop a Hero in a round easily if it's not a 12+ Wound Behemoth.

Dunno what kind of Magic output Sylvaneth have, but you can also bring buddies with spells since that's how Grand Alliances work.

Requizen wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Okay just did the math.

If the ghoul king has 6 wounds, a 4 plus save and a 5+ ward save and he regens D3 a turn then I need to put him down in a single round.

To guarantee that I would need roughly 3 units of Kurnoth bows to do an average of 5.98 wounds.

Yeah...I am not seeing this guy being easy to put down.


I mean maybe if Alarielle cast three of her metamorphisis powers on him. That would average about 7 wounds roughly.

I just don't think getting into CC with him is viable if hes going to be bubblewrapped by nasty enemy units.

Mortal Wounds are the best way to snipe out characters. If you have the capability to bring multiple Wizards with good spells, you can drop a Hero in a round easily if it's not a 12+ Wound Behemoth.

Dunno what kind of Magic output Sylvaneth have, but you can also bring buddies with spells since that's how Grand Alliances work.

Well Drycha is a mortal wound machine, but only really in close combat.

Alarielle can put out a lot of mortal wounds with her tree ability, especially since she can cast it three times although I'd prefer to have her using mystic shield and the heal ability.

Outside of that, awaken the forest but that's dependent on a whole bunch of things.

Also I really need to remember that my woods kill his units when they move through them. I think a lot of players don't realize that that rule exists.

I thought you could only cast the same spell once?

pm713 wrote:
I thought you could only cast the same spell once?

Yeah I had heard that as well. Which would mean she couldn't cast that spell three times. So she really doesn't do that many mortal wounds.

I haven't used her yet, but I am a little iffy with Alarielle. She doesn't seem to have the damage, magic, or survivability to be worth the points you pay for her. 16 wounds and 3+ armor is a bit weak, its only 4 wounds more than a Treelord and I ve seen them go down in a single turn.

I mean I saw one Goblin army with this dirt unit of spiders that took Skarbrand to one wound.

Alarielle is a boss. She has the capability to just straight up remove a model from play on with one of her weapons, has lots of wounds which she can regen (twice per turn if you roll 1-3 on her Soul Amorphae), and can cast both Arcane Bolt and her unique spell, both of which can deal Mortal Wounds from decent range.

She also heals most if not all of your army every turn if you want so she's pretty good.

Requizen wrote:
Alarielle is a boss. She has the capability to just straight up remove a model from play on with one of her weapons, has lots of wounds which she can regen (twice per turn if you roll 1-3 on her Soul Amorphae), and can cast both Arcane Bolt and her unique spell, both of which can deal Mortal Wounds from decent range.

Theres a low chance of that happening. You first have to inflict a wound with the weapon and then roll again. Treelords have a similar sort of attack. I also think the wounds need to have fallen past a certain level.

16 isn't that high. Again, I've seen big models like that get deleted by mortal wound spam in a single turn.

She has to cast the spell and then rolls her casting dice and on a 4+ causes a mortal wound. So on average that's 3 mortal wounds. Compare that to Drycha....

Well you will be picking the heal option twice because of the restrictions on summoning.

I also think Durthu does more damage with his sword than the Beetle.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

pm713 wrote:
She also heals most if not all of your army every turn if you want so she's pretty good.

That is her best ability.

Alarielle's is different because she insta kills everything on double 6's whereas Treelords need it to exceed the wounds left.

pm713 wrote:
Alarielle's is different because she insta kills everything on double 6's whereas Treelords need it to exceed the wounds left.

That's a 1 in 36 chance; assuming she even wounds. The Treelord has a higher chance of actually wounding in the first place 2+ 3+ I think. Whereas Alarielles is lower.

So once in a blue moon you might kill that Terrorgheist. Assuming he doesn't pass his ward save. Whereas the Terror, I think the guy was claiming, can do six mortal wounds on a single dice roll up to 24 or something ridiculous like that. ie It can kill Alarielle in one turn quite handily. It has a lot less hoops to go through.

The Treelord has the one attack with better rend and sometimes better wounding. Alarielle gets four.

The scream for the terrorgeist in that book is d6 +6 at full wounds against bravery. For every point the roll exceeds the targets bravery then a mortal wound is done. If allerielle is bravery 10 then if he rolls a 6 he will do a grand total of 2 wounds. After you knock it down two notches it can't touch anything bravery 10. You really do need to hit the characters. Also make sure when you are deploying to try and keep the kurnoth hunters with the bows until the last deployment. Then you can see where he places his characters. If he still hasn't placed any place them central to make sure its less of a hike to hit stuff. With 30 inch range you should be able to get in range fairly easily.