Nagash vs Karl Franz Ascendant

James Brett and I decided to play a 6,000pt game on the weekend, pitting Nagash against Karl Franz Ascendant and Balthasar Gelt, Incarnate of Metal in a game where hopefully their power wouldn't completely dominate the game. 

This is not really a battle report, but I was taking some pictures with my phone as we went along, so I thought I would give an account of how things panned out. I apologise for the quality of some of the photos. Nagash wasn't painted anyway, so I didn't bother to bring my good camera along - and now I regret that decision. Obviously I need more practice with this phone camera if it is going to serve as my backup.

Empire Army
I knew Nagash would be in the enemy army, but that was about it. I decided fielding really large units of knights would probably mess up the game balance, so I focused on big infantry blocks instead. I figured a unit of 60 Halberdiers with 2 horde detachments of 30 would be good for a laugh (and potentially scary), so that was the most exciting thing in my list. Apart from Karl Franz Ascendant, I guess. He's OK too...

• Karl Franz Ascendant
• Balthasar Gelt, Incarnate of Metal
• Arch Lector on War Altar with Armour of Fortune, Great Weapon, Shield
• Ludwig Schwartzhelm
• Warrior Priest with Great Weapon, Heavy Armour
• Engineer
• Captain with Full Plate Armour, Shield, Sword of Striking
• Captain with Full Plate Armour, Shield, Sword of Might
• Battle Wizard (Level 2, Lore of Light) with Dispel Scroll
• 60 Halberdiers with Full Command
• 30 Halberdier detachment
• 30 Halberdier detachment
• 16 Inner Circle Knights with Full Command
• 16 Knights with Great Weapons, Full Command
• 60 Greatswords with Full Command
• 60 Flagellants with Prophet of Doom
• 15 Reiksguard Knights with Full Command
• 4 Demigryph Knights with Full Command
• Great Cannon

The Cannon was basically an afterthought. I decided it would be worth having, just to give Nagash something to think about. Other than that, I had no shooting. There's not much point trying to shoot the Undead to death.

Undead Legion Army
James knew I would be taking both KFA and the fancy version of Balthasar Gelt, so decided to give Nagash a bit of backup in the form of a blender Vampire Lord. He also threw in the End Times Krell, figuring he was likely to tag along wherever Nagash went. The other main unit of note was the 15 Vargheists, weighing in at about 700 points.

• Nagash
• Vampire Lord (Level 1, Lore of Vampires) on Hellsteed with Ogre Blade, Talisman of Preservation, The Other Trickster's Shard, Quickblood, Red Fury, Heavy Armour, Shield
• Tomb King with Armour of Destiny, Great Weapon
• Krell, Mortarch of Despair
• Vampire BSB (Level 1, Lore of Vampires) with Dragonhelm, Dispel Scroll, Heavy Armour, Great Weapon
• 40 Crypt Ghouls with Ghast
• 40 Crypt Ghouls with Ghast
• 40 VC Skeleton Warriors with Light Armour, Shields, Full Command, Banner of Swiftness
• 16 TK Skeleton Archers with Full Command
• 16 TK Skeleton Archers with Full Command
• 30 Zombies with Standard, Musician
• 5 Dire Wolves with Doom Wolf
• 5 Dire Wolves with Doom Wolf
• 15 Vargheists with Vargoyle
• 2 Fell Bats
• 2 Fell Bats
• Corpse Cart with Balefire
• 6 Black Knights with Full Command, Lichebone Standard
• 5 Hexwraiths with Hellwraith
• Hierotitan
• Casket of Souls
• Necrosphinx
• Terrorgheist
• Terrorgheist
• Varghulf

The list is notable for all the things I didn't bother with - magic standards, small disposable units with which to help control the game... Such subtlety was lost on me when I started thinking of units of 60 models.

The Game

Deployment, after James makes his vanguard moves. we didn't bother with alternating deployment. We were both a bit worried that James would run out of room on his side if he couldn't reshuffle things as he went along. I would not recommend a regular 6x4 table for games larger than this one.

Lores of Magic: The Lore of Undeath

Well, this is something a little different. The new Warhammer: Nagash book contains a lot of rules for special characters, new units and combining the Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings armies into a single more powerful army called the Undead Legions. It also includes a new Lore of Magic - the Lore of Undeath.

As usual, I thought I would go through this new Lore and see what it has to offer. It's worth noting that, as with everything in the Warhammer: Nagash book, there is likely to be some debate as to whether these spells (and the Undead Legions) are going to be permitted in tournaments. The content of the book is intended to represent a particular time period and set of events, and so many people may feel it's not appropriate for them to be used in what might otherwise be considered "normal" games. Anyway, I'm not going to get into that here. Let's focus on the new Lore of Magic.

Before we begin, there is something else unusual about this Lore that I should mention - all wizards in all armies can use it. So there could be Orcs, Elves, Daemons, Skaven, and all manner of other spellcasters running around, using the Lore of Undeath. So unless you're a Dwarf player, this Lore applies to you!

One other note is that the summoning spells in the Lore of Undeath work differently from any we've seen before in the various Undead Lores of Magic. Instead of creating a specific type of unit (such as Zombies) and a particular number of models or wounds, the spells here work on points values. It's an elegant way to broaden the scope of different units you can create, as well as giving you the option to give them the sort of equipment such a regiment could normally buy (like command models or weapons). The only restriction is that the unit still has to meet the normal minimum size, so you can't go around raising 3 Grave Guard or something silly like that. Other than that, you could see all manner of new units appearing on the table (provided that you have suitable models on hand).