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Hi. Looking for advice on a semi competitive death list for a 1750pts tournament. To make things harder I am looking to not use Tomb Kings, and if i can help it not use too much Flesh Eater Court stuff (ie stick to deathlords, deathrattle, nighthaunt, deathmages, deathwalker, etc). Bit of a sucker for punishment here, hence not hoping for anything beyond semi competitive. Advice also welcome from people who have never played as Death but can give their opinions after playing death.

I’m in the same boat.

Getting into AoS after a long hiatus. Had a reasonably sized Undead army back in 5th ed WHFB. Mostly rot-free. Vampires, necromancers, wights, wraiths, skeleton horsemen. and mounted wights. Big blocks of skeletons. Few odds/ends of support units. No ghouls, no zombies.

I played a game yesterday, my first full sized game of AoS (did a couple intros and a small 4-way game). So take this with a grain of salt.

My take aways from running a primarily deathrattle list:

2k points, cut down to 1,800 to accommodate opponent.

Deathrattle horde
10 man black knights
20 man grave guard
mounted wight lord
2x 20 man blocks of skeletons w/ shield and hand weapon
1x 30 man block of skeletons with spear/shield

necromancer on steed
banshee
vampire lord on steed
dire wolves
carrion

(2k list had another banshee and necromancer)

Skeletons need to be in big blocks. I don’t think I’d put them down at less then 30 guys. They have mediocre attacks, so need a lot of them to get stuff done. The extra attacks for size is good, but if you just field a block of 20, all it takes is one guy to die for those to go away. The formation bonus didn’t help them much with saves, as all it takes is rend 1 for them to get no save. Used the march bonus a few times. Not worth the points IMHO.

Black knights are not bad, but are not the anvil upon which armies broke that Mounted Wights used to be for me. Need to be careful not to overextend yourself if they are the only mobile thing in a slow list.

On the topic of things that just don’t perform like they used to, vampires are not the walking blenders of days gone by.

Stacking buffs seems pretty effective. Wight lord for +1 attacks with all your weapons, and a necromancers, pile in and attack twice ability should cause some carnage. But there is not a huge amount of layers buffs and synergy. Compared to the Sigmar and Chaos guys I was facing, who seemed to have that sort of thing in spades.

Overall I felt my anvils/tarpits were not rugged enough, and my hammers not killy enough.

Looking at units I’d be willing to field, my novice eye is drawn to spirit hosts. They look like the anvil/roadblock unit I need. 3W, 4+ save that ignores rend seems pretty sturdy. They get 6 kinda crummy attacks, but mortal wound on a 6 to hit. Reasonably mobile.

And then I think I need a giant centerpiece model to go eat things. Vamp on a zombie dragon or a mortarch (probably Manfred). They look like the go-to units for crushing things. I have a dragon I can borrow to try out the vamp. Will give that a shot next game. The other things will have to work their way into my budget and across the hobby bench.

Bonestly I'd say you're limiting yourself too much for theme. At least consider tomb kings, they have a bunch of great deathrattle synergies and you can always just model them as skeletons too. After all, a mummy is just a skeleton burrito.

@Nevelon thanks for that. really good advice from someone who has managed more games than me. I mainly played 40k, but occasionally aos so im behind on game experience. Recently me and my mate signed up to the aos tournament in May at warhammer fest for fun and a challenge (and an excuse to take a couple days off work for a long weekend).

For my 1750pt list I was originally thinking of:
- necromancer on nightmare
- Neferata
- 2x5 dire wolves

Legion of the dead Battalion
- Wightking with tomb blade + infernal standard
- 30 skeletons with spears
- 20 skeletons with spears
- 10 skeletons with swords
- 5 black knights
- 20 Grave guard with great weapons

After what you said (and having spent sometime on this site http://tools.druchii.net/AoS-Combat-Calculator.php checking out how mannfred can make things a bit killier) i was thinking of:

- necromancer on nightmare
- Mannfred
- Wightking with tomb blade + infernal standard
- 2x5 dire wolves
- 30 skeletons with spears
- 30 skeletons with spears
- 10 skeletons with swords
- 20 Grave guard with great weapons

what do you think? (my other list is a mortarch, Ghoul king on zombie dragon + ghoul patrol + 2x5 dire wolves)

I have heard a fair few people so far say that the legion of death battalion isnt worth it now so seems like its eating up some points for not much gain.

I feel this force is fairly resilient, but cant really see myself dealing with big things too well. plenty of anvil, not much hammer.

as for tomb kings, nothing against them - i just used to get VC when ages ago when i first got into warhammer as a kid. that and i cant buy tomb king stuff for sensible money.

On the tomb kings minis, some options wouldn't be hard to convert from something else. Like I thought that Skeleton Bowmen would be cool to have, and you can just use the standard skeleton kit and get some bow and quiver bits to make them into skeleton bowmen.

Other ideas are doing counts-as for Tomb Kings models. Like make a Screaming Skull Catapult from something else like a Skaven DoomBell kit. Or you could make a counts-as Settra or counts-as snake-cavalry (whatever they're called) as long as the bases sizes match up.

Don't discount Tomb Kings choices out of hand, since you don't need the exact models.

What are the good things to fish for in tomb kings? I’ve got some stuff from before the split the undead back in 5th. A pair of probably comically small skull chuckers, and some random mummies and oddly geared skeletons.

I think if you used the skull catapults with a Banshee or two, that could work - target enemy unit with screaming skull, lower their Bravery, then use Banshee Wail on the same unit and maybe get a few models downed that way.

Not sure on the mummies, or what you have with skeletons, but the catapults could be useful.

Try some ideas of counts-as for the stuff that looks good in the Tomb Kings warscrolls. They usually work well with DeathRattle units.