8th Ed. Defeating The New Nagash

He has no weakness really other than his absurd point cost. The statlines too good to kill him with Death snipe spells and he's strong enough to hold his own against an Oldblood on a Carnosaur before spells are factored in. This is my hypothetical plan for beating him.

If I was building a 4000 point LM list specifically to kill Nagash I would start with a Slann with Focus of Mystery, Becalming Cognition, Harmonic Convergence, Channeling Staff and either take Unfathomable Presence or one of the upper level MR bestowing talisimans. Then give him a unit of AT LEAST 40 Temple Guard. You want the Razor Standard or War Banner.

I would take at two Carnosaur riding Saurus characters (I'd favor Strength boosters, the Other Trickster's Shard, and pretty much any potion). I'd probably take Tet and two or three Skink priests (with Lore of Beasts since Tet has Heaven's covered).

I would cast Arcane Forging at Nagash at every opportunity. Take his magic armor and he is Carnosaur chow. Take his magic weapon and he can no longer beat a Carnosaur rider in a straight fight. Take his Arcane item and he loses four spells. PROBABLY this will draw Nagash's dispel dice. One thing Nagash can't do is dispel spells in an exceptional fashion (besides +5 I guess), so either the player will have to take the hit with Arcane Forging or give you a free reign with the rest of the casting phase. Keep Drain Magic. Cast Soul Quench and Tempest once (at units screening Nagash) and then swap them out for Light spells (direct damage for wilting Nagash's support units, but mostly you want the buffs).

Use Tet's Vanguard and/or Walk Between Worlds to shove your Carnosaurs down the throat of Nagash's model. Once the unit is pinned in place you SHOULD control the board since your opponent spent 1000 points on one model. Therefore you should be able to flank the enemy Deathstar with Kroxigor, an Ancient Stegadon, Carnosaur or Saurus Cowboy (or multiple tihings!). Once in close combat you want to cast Hand of Glory (unless you get Speed of Light then you can ditch Hand of Glory), Birona's Time Warp if you got it, Curse of the Midnight Wind, and Harmonic Convergence and maybe Wyssans or Ice Shard Blizzard if you have power dice to spare.

If Nagash tries to avoids combat that's spectacular. First off that's more opportunities to hit him with Arcane Forging. More importantly his ridiculously strong statline is meaningless outside of close combat making him basically an overpriced Slann. Take the rest of his army apart and win by points.
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An alternative would be to take two Slann instead of a Focus of Mystery Slann (probably want to leave out Tet with ths). The Slann take Light and one with Shadow. Once hexed to a manageable level, your Carnosaur riders should be able to beat Nagash down. Steed of Shadows is a huge plus to let you move a Carnosaur into range (I don't see any text saying the character has to be on foot). If you roll the Withering you can combo it with augmented Shem's Burning Gaze or Banishment to knock Nagash down a peg.

 

Good idea, but the lore of Vampires can heal one wound per successful spell cast. Add to this that he can just the Lore of Vampires Counts signature spell Invocation of Nehek he can heal 1d6+5 wounds!

Take two fully loaded Oldbloods on Carnosaurs with your 1000 points of Lords. Alternatively, put away the minis and play an RPG which generally has more interesting character versus character combat if that's what you are going for.

 

We dont have to defeat HIM.

1) maske sure Tour friend tell you that he intent to use Nagash. He is after all quite powerful.

2) get a cohort unit of 100 skinks and 2 scrolls.

3) while Nagash is good in the magic phase he isn't THAT good. Scroll spells he needs and dispel the rest for 2 turns.

4) at T3 you better be able to get into close combat with him with your skinks. They can last the rest of the game.

5) @2000pts he only have 500pts left to special/rare unit. Hardly an issue. Their core is utter trash as well.



Nagash will want to raise a lot of units to compensate for his high cost. If we can get to T3 without him having raised more units we can probably also remove what he had to begin with. This mean that while he may go about and raise 600pts of core we don't care much. Just take it down. Obviously we cannot stop everything he throws at us so he'll probably try and bait us by raising core first or something like that. In CC he can't use damage spells so he'll need somewhat restricted.
Should the player decide to have a scroll caddy he'll only have roughly 400pts at his disposal after core tax.

Try and get 1st turn by having few drops. 100 skinks is a decent start. Also this trying to do a hardcore list tailor. All I'm asking for is 2 scrolls and a single tarpit that can last. Everything else can be fast moving in order to quickly kill his core, but isn't strictly necesssry.

Nagash is ridiculous, but the rest if the army isnt.

 

CR with what? He have 7 attacks + a thunderstomp. I think he can easily gain at least 4 kills unless unlucky.

 

Actually.. Templeguards with banner, slann with BSB and the war banner will give a static CR of 6, assuming 3 ranks.

Nagash only have 6 attacks and not 7. *if* we can get both doom and darkness and the -1S/T we should actually win combat.