AoS The summoning of nurgle

[Canas]

So, the new nurgle come with a new summoning mechanic. The rules are as follows

• summoning costs contagion points, not reinforcement points
• Summoning isn't a spellcast, it just works.
• Summoning is done within 12" of a gnarlmaw or friendly nurgle hero and 9" away from enemies.
• Nothing is mentioned about the summoning counting as its move!
• Points are earned as follows at the start of your hero phase you get:
  • 3 points for having a friendly model in your territory (not sure if a gnarlmaw technicly counts for this, would make things easier though)
  • 3 points for having one in your enemies territor (idem for the gnarlmaw)
  • 1 additional point for every territory in which you only have your models and no enemies
  • D3 for each gnarlmaw that has no enemies within 3"
  • There's command traits that can give points
  • certain battalions can give points

You can summon all demons, except for Rotigus. Costs are multiples of 7 cuz well, nurgle. Great unclean one at 28 is the most expensive, a gnarlmaw a single stack of nurglings or 5 plaguebearers are cheapest at 7.

Now you'l Always be able to put down 1 gnarlmaw, and you can summon more as mentioned before. So turn 1 you'l probably start with 4 + D3 points. In the best case scenario and assuming you're just dumping gnarlmaws everywhere you could gain the following points. I'm assuming there'l Always be an enemy and ally in both territories from turn 2 onward.

turn 1: 4 +d3 = 7, summon 1 gnarlmaw
turn 2: 6 + 2d3 = 12, summon 1 gnarlmaw, 5 points left over
turn 3: 6 + 3d3 = 15, summon 2 gnarlmaws, 6 points left over, from this point onward you start scaling nicely exponationally as you get enough points for 2 summons per turn.
turn 4: 6 + 5d3 = 21, summon 3 gnarlmaws, 6 points left over
turn 5: 6 + 8d3 = 30, with 6 left over from the last turn in 36 points.

Without summoning extra gnarlmaws the best you can do is 6 + d3 per turn, which is easily within acceptable limits, maybe even on the low side considering most the summons of 7 don't amount to much.

Anyways, it seems like a much better way of dealing with summoning than the current rules. It avoids the issue of requiring a reserve of points which I find a very great improvement. There's ways for an enemy to diminish the amount you gain while you have ways to increase it which is nice. The only issues I personally see are the costs being a tad high, that unclean one for 28 you're not going to reach until turn 4 unless you're very Lucky and the things you can summon for 7 points barely amount to anything apart from the gnarlmaw (their effects are quite decent alongside the generation of more points)

So, what do you guys think about it?

 

[Aginor]

It is quite a bit more complex but I think it can work well.

Also from the first look at the new Death rules it seems like Death will get something similar to that as well!

 

[Canas]

mm, if death gets that I'm wondering how long till they'l implement it for everyone. If only for the sake of consistency. Also, I'm curious how they're going to balance that. Nurgle with the gnarlmaws makes sense. Other faction don't necesarly have that.

 

[Aginor]

Yeah for Seraphon... it would be a bit of a stretch. Perhaps use the Slann or an EotG as the Lynchpin that has to be there for the effect to work.
For Death and Nurgle it works kinda well with the trees and graves, Tzeentch can do without it I guess, just with the Horrors splitting stuff, no clue what to do for Slaanesh but Khorne already has something halfway working (the battleshock thing) that they could maybe expand if need be.
Who else uses summoning?

 

[Crowsfoot]

I love it and I am really looking forward to getting my Maggotkin painted and finished off.

I doubt I would wait to bring in a GUO and would use the points to bring in trees

 

[LordRibbit]

If we got it I could imagine giant balls of energy or mini-suns, that would be pretty cool!

 

[Xasto]

• summoning costs contagion points, not reinforcement points

You still need to have points put aside in your list to get the summoning, don't you?

 

[Crowsfoot]

You still need to have points put aside in your list to get the summoning, don't you?

Don't think so as the units are not really summoned, I can't remember seeing anything in the book

 

[Ritual]

Could easily update the Seraphon lore a bit so that our dudes are summoned by the Slann through some kind of artifacts or beacons... Shrines perhaps.

 

[Canas]

You still need to have points put aside in your list to get the summoning, don't you?

Its not mentioned anywhere, plus if you do it'd make this mechanic nigh unuseable. Putting aside 200+ points and needing to wait like 2-3 turns seems like it'd be terrible. The limitation here is the (very) limited generation of points, which frankly is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better. This way summoning is more than a glorified thunderstrike that can get you an extra behemoth or hero.

Yeah for Seraphon... it would be a bit of a stretch. Perhaps use the Slann or an EotG as the Lynchpin that has to be there for the effect to work.
For Death and Nurgle it works kinda well with the trees and graves, Tzeentch can do without it I guess, just with the Horrors splitting stuff, no clue what to do for Slaanesh but Khorne already has something halfway working (the battleshock thing) that they could maybe expand if need be.
Who else uses summoning?

Horrors splitting should have the cost adjusted so that buying 10 pink ones include those 20 blue and 20 brimstone ones that'l spawn. Adjust their power so that 1 unit of doesn't need to cost an arm and a leg and they'd be fine..

Battleshock thing is for all chaos daemons right? Not just khorne? And yeah that one is already exempt from point costs anyway.

Death might be a tad weird with graves though, you can't spread graves like nurgle can spread his corruption. Though I suppose death could rely on stuff dying in combat as they can just raise the fallen warriors. E.g. each time some model (friend or foe) dies on a 6+ they get 1 point or something along those lines. Or just for each model dying within 10" of a death hero as a requirement?

For us, I'd say do something with our slann and our various skink heroes (priests, starseers, EoTG, Oracle, they're all "magical" in nature intended to support the slann). Get a point for each of em alive, slann obviously creating most. Maybe something with creating a network as that seems to be a thing we like? You get 3 points for a slann and EoTG, 2 points for each Skink within 3" of the slann and EoTG, and 1 point for each skink withing 3" of that skink? Bonus points if you shape it like a constalation? Seems unique and like something that could be fun.

 

[Canas]

Could easily update the Seraphon lore a bit so that our dudes are summoned by the Slann through some kind of artifacts or beacons... Shrines perhaps.

I think nurgle (and possibly sylvaneth) are the only for whom terrain makes much sense though. They have living terrain that grows. Noone else does. Obviously we can bring a shrine, or gain bonus points from being on an arcane terrain or some such. But summoning more terrain to generate more points seems like something only living terrain really can do.

actually, with our obsession with making networks and leylines we might be able to as well to a degree. create a network of focal points, bonus points for making it shaped like a constallation. Might work in tandem with what I wrote earlier. Though it's already a stretch. And gets even weirder for other factions...

 

[Ritual]

Just makes a lot of sense for Seraphon to be summonable or renewable to a degree because they're literally physical manifestations of memories... We are of the stars!

Death, Seraphon, Daemons... Things that make sense to be summonable / renewable.

Sigmarines to a degree, but I can't recall how long their regeneration process takes, so probably not. They don't need it anyway.

Anything else is alive... So makes no sense to have them regenerating.

 

[Aginor]

Horrors splitting should have the cost adjusted so that buying 10 pink ones include those 20 blue and 20 brimstone ones that'l spawn. Adjust their power so that 1 unit of doesn't need to cost an arm and a leg and they'd be fine..

This. Everything else is just wrong for them IMO.


About Nurgle vs. Death:
As far as I understand it Nurgle really summons new units don't they?
From what I read about Death until now it seems they only regenerate existing units. Not quite sure yet...

 

[Ritual]

They regenerate units, and then when an enemy unit is wiped out near a graveyard they can regenerate a complete unit on a certain diceroll (see todays new article)

 

[Crowsfoot]

They regenerate units, and then when an enemy unit is wiped out near a graveyard they can regenerate a complete unit on a certain diceroll (see todays new article)

Arkhan looks like he is going to be a beast, Luckily that's who I built

 

[Aginor]

They regenerate units, and then when an enemy unit is wiped out near a graveyard they can regenerate a complete unit on a certain diceroll (see todays new article)

Ah, haven't read that yet.

EDIT: uh. wait, where is it?
EDIT2: Ah found it. The hompage had not refreshed for some reason...

 

[Xasto]

Its not mentioned anywhere, plus if you do it'd make this mechanic nigh unuseable. Putting aside 200+ points and needing to wait like 2-3 turns seems like it'd be terrible. The limitation here is the (very) limited generation of points, which frankly is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better. This way summoning is more than a glorified thunderstrike that can get you an extra behemoth or hero.

But it not being mentionned anywhere doesn't mean it doesn't cost points. It just says that you need contagion points instead of summoning with a wizard, but the rules of matched play clearly state that any unit summoned must be paid with points. This would still apply, since they only changed the WAY they're summoned.

EDIT: Also it is not unuseable, you actually can be certain that you'll be summoning a unit of plaguebearers anywhere near a tree or hero and can't be dispelled. This in itself is a pretty good mechanic and better than regular summoning IMO. Just having the possibility of planting trees all over the board and then, for example, waiting for an objective that drops in later turns for certain scenarios seems like very strong.

 

[Crowsfoot]

But it not being mentionned anywhere doesn't mean it doesn't cost points. It just says that you need contagion points instead of summoning with a wizard, but the rules of matched play clearly state that any unit summoned must be paid with points. This would still apply, since they only changed the WAY they're summoned.

It will be paid with contagion points, it does not say what points does it, can't remember?

 

[Xasto]

It will be paid with contagion points, it does not say what points does it, can't remember?

Pretty sure it says points from your reserve pool, I don't have the actual rules before me to quote.

 

[Crowsfoot]

Pretty sure it says points from your reserve pool, I don't have the actual rules before me to quote.

Yeah I think it does now you have said that.