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If you were making an Undead army, based mostly on skeletons/zombies, wich of allegiance would you all choose/reject & why?
What would you include?
Limitations to consider:
1) 500pts
2) No named characters (Manfred, etc)
3) Allies, Merc units (from GH'19), Legends, & Endless Spells are options
4) Assume anything needed is available.

Personally I'm leaning towards either The Legion of Grief or the generic Grand Alliance: Death.
Why?
LoG allows a pretty wide choice + native FEC and Graveyard abilities (provided my Necro is alive to make use of them).
Death simply allows for virtually anything.... And a one time 2d6 wounds summons in the form of the Blade of Dark Summons - Can add that much more punch to my (atm) rather tiny force + seems like a very necromantic thing to do.

So thoughts?

Are you starting a new army?

If so, I'd consider holding on until we know more about the new Soulblight Gravelord faction. It looks like it will be effectively replacing Legions of Nagash so likely to be a pretty big shakeup to how armies with these units work.

That aside, Death Grand Alliance doesn't seem a good idea. You dont get the resurrection command ability and thats an absolute deal breaker in my opinion.

I also don't really rate Legion of Grief, unless you're specifically wanting expanded access to Nighthaunt units. The leadership debuff ability is just too niche. Against some armies it will do nothing at all. Sacrament or Night legions seem a lot more generally relevant.

Final thought, do Mortek Guard count as skeletons? If so, Bonereapers are hands down the best faction for taking a load of skeletons right now.

 Stux wrote:
Are you starting a new army?

If so, I'd consider holding on until we know more about the new Soulblight Gravelord faction. It looks like it will be effectively replacing Legions of Nagash so likely to be a pretty big shakeup to how armies with these units work.

Not so much building a new army as organizing some existing stuff for a short time

The Soulbliight Gravelords, although certainly of interest, won't be a factor in this - unless their book lands on the shelf by May 4th.....
May 5th is when our Escalation League kicks off & my fledging undead hoard begins its march to victory. And I can't change factions during the Leagues duration.

 Stux wrote:
That aside, Death Grand Alliance doesn't seem a good idea. You dont get the resurrection command ability and thats an absolute deal breaker in my opinion.

Yes, that is a concern....

[quote=Stux 797845 11107651 76adf3cb0756e57f60a32f82a05a18d9.jpgI also don't really rate Legion of Grief, unless you're specifically wanting expanded access to Nighthaunt units. The leadership debuff ability is just too niche. Against some armies it will do nothing at all. Sacrament or Night legions seem a lot more generally relevant.

What FEC units can LoG take..? I didn't think any had the right keywords, but could well be wrong!

Oh yep, you're right, my FeC guys lack a Keyword. How'd I misread that? What was I looking at? Back to the drawing board.
So mercs or allies they'd have to be then....

You could always just use the generic "Death" Allegenance abilies from the core rulebook and then take anything you want.

I have 1000pts of Bonereapers, and I'm going to be cherry picking from other death factions to finish my 2k list and just running them as Death.

If you're not worried about competitive strength, yeah definitely an option.

But as discussed, you give up powerful allegiance abilities for this, and if you're mostly taking Legions units they are mostly on the low power side even with the allegiance abilities, so it would really hurt to lose Endless Legions etc.

But totally up to the op if this is a concern for this campaign of course!

 Stux wrote:
If you're not worried about competitive strength, yeah definitely an option.

But as discussed, you give up powerful allegiance abilities for this, and if you're mostly taking Legions units they are mostly on the low power side even with the allegiance abilities, so it would really hurt to lose Endless Legions etc.

Yes, generic "Death" IS being strongly considered as it gives me access to everything I own with no funky rules navigation.

Losing access to Endless Legions etc is also a concern.
Mostly because those just seem to be very undead things that one would expect to see done.

Competive strength?
I dont have too much to worry about. Over 1/2 the league are brand new to AoS . I dont have to curbstomp them (we want them to play more!). And a weak force from me will still present a tough fight for them.
Hence why I'm busting out the skeletons & zombies (+ some friends) in the 1st place.

In the end? I've gone with generic "Death".
Like I said, it gives me the widest possible choice amongst my collection.

But the deciding factor was actually when I included an Abhorrant Ghoul King. He's a wizard, can summon x10 ghouls once/game & I gain access to the horrific looking (and reasonably effective) Corpse-mare Stampede Endless Spell. That spell looks like a very necromancer type thing to cast. Unfortunately only the FEC characters (& Nagash) can cast it.
So a Ghoul King had to be included.
The drawback(?) The Ghoul King & spell ate up points, I couldn't afford the Necromancer, and the GK- as an ally & my only character atm - can't lead the army.
So now I have a Ghoul King leading a generic "Death" force - of everything I wanted to field initially anyways....