Undeath Carpet Firebelly?

So I realised the other day that the Lore of Undeath is actually available for our favourite blowtorch bellies, and generally whilst I've liked having them on carpets with a breath weapon, often the lore of Fire let me down.

So, what do people think about this? I'd try it out but I'm nowhere near my Ogres at the moment.

The mobility allows for some placing of very annoying cheap skelly units, to redirect and stall, and there's always the option to save up counters for a big finish, depending on what other spell you roll.

Thoughts?

Could be interesting, though personally I'd stick with fireballs.  Ryse will get you a unit of Skeleton Warriors and a token per casting, so it's not amazing unless you're Nagash or Arkhan.

Still, give it a crack, see how it goes.  Reminds me that I need to finish my "Thor"termaster conversion for my Heavens slaughtermaster with carpet.

It would nicely get around the summoning spells limited range, and also serve as a solid dispel-dice-draw.  That being said, the sig is a base-casting of 9; a three dice spell for a level two if you want it reliably.  It'll definitely limit any other casting.

I actually like the idea of an Ogre Horde using undead as filler, I mean you can't eat them, but they can make edible things less fighty, allowing the ogres to focus on the fun things to fight. (IE give us cheap chaff to dispose of, but I do not know much of the ET stuff, so I could be talking out of my arse.)

Of course you can eat them.  What's better than a walking larder?

Having reviewed the materials... two things come to mind:

Time to start that Tomb King Army I always wanted to start and...

Time to convert a Slaughtermaster into a 'Herald of the Undying Maw!' who resurrects past meals to so that they may be chewed up in battle and fed to the ever hungry spiritual maw! Time to have my Horde go into alternate Maw worship cult phase!

Yea I dont feel that taking lore of undeath is something I'm keen on. A Firebelly is for lore of fire, and giving one lore of undeath through technicality sounds like an attempt to power game. Starting to feel that much of this End Times business is a giant wank designed to appease WHFB players to liquidate said products.

EVERY army being able to take lore of undeath regardless of what kind of caster? Seems fairly ridiculous to me.

Eh, it's an option, and to be honest my terrible relationship with the treacherous Lore of Fire far justifies it in my eyes. If Orcs and Gobbos can take it, why not a fat bloke who's had one curry too many?

I see it as an option to add a personal touch or theme to an army.

The Fire Belly is a worshipper of a different type of Maw... it makes sense that there is a possibility to worship other incarnations of the Maw. Afterall, death is all consuming, and a 'priest' of undeath is worshipping the Maw's Hunger in a new and unique way.

To me, it just helps add a little more character. Sure it can be used as power gameyness, but I think discounting as pure power gaming cheapens the ability of players to use this new tool to be creative.

Now I probably wont use a firebelly in this way simply because the casting costs are to high to do reliably, but I think the Death Belly has a place.

I will be honest though, I'm just doing because I have a Carpet Firebelly already, and every experiment with the lore of fire has resulted in crippling failure *weeps*

One tournament saw him forget how to be a wizard in 3 of 5 games. I personally blame all these End Times eruptions and whatnot.

I read on another post that new lore can only be taken by 3+ lvl  casters?

Not sure where that's come from, but it might be confused with the End Times: Khaine shenanigans.

FAQ says everyone can take undeath.

End Times: Khaine gives level 3+ wizards a new "End Times" spell that you've got buckly's chance of actually casting.

Have you seen the new Khaine spells?  Vamps get a free 300 point Grave Guard unit + Wight King and we get a Ninitative based Vortex just like our #6 spell....

Actually, our End Times spell is the large Purple Sun, except on any miscast in any subsequent phase you center the template on the casting wizard and then it goes away.  It is thoroughly retarded, when for the same casting cost you could just cast large Purple Sun.

Well, I think you can only cast a small purple sun, but yeah, it's dumb.

I think the lore of beasts one is just epically over powered.  . Mighty s3 all day.  How embarrassing.

Anyway... stupid khaine spells aren't tournament legal in most places but undeath is.

I'm going to give the undeath firebelly a go I think. Is it worth being level 2? What spells are you looking at or just going for the sig every time? I haven't had a lot of experience with Undeath yet.

On a slightly tangential note, is the Lore of Undeath making you concerned about ethereals? That normally bothers me at the best of times but the danger is now that anyone can generate a free ethereal or two. Ogres don't have a lot of answers particularly in comped lists (unless you fancy taking some yhettees, which is an option I suppose!)

Ethereals ... yet another problem easily solved by Fireball (and most of the other spells that the Lore of Fire offers).

-Snark

Meh, just not convinced on them. I ran a variation on your list quite a bit and I just didn't seem to have much effect.

I'm going to stick with moar magic weapons ... but the dragonhide banner is becoming more attractive there.

The issue I have with "moar magic weapons" is that it:  1-Requires moar characters and dictates their kit out to some degree and 2- Forces you to spread those characters out among your hammer units.

Summoned ethereal chaff is different than normal ethereal units.  You can deploy characters opposite your opponents normal ethereals to put the magic weapons to work.  Summoned ethereal chaff will appear out of nowhere during turn 2-3 when you are about to combo charge ftw and your opponent will use it to chaff whatever unit doesn't have magic weapons.  Thus to combat summoned ethereals with magic weapons, you have to place a magic weapon in each unit ... so no gutstar.

My recommendation is to take Fire or Heavens (both are also great in our current elf-heavy meta, btw) and simply back up from the summoned ethereal chaff and nuke it in the magic phase.  If you can position the hellheart you can block additional summons and get your charge the following round.

-Snark

I must apologise for this, as I simply haven't had a chance to test the Undeath Firebelly yet.

However, there are a few key factors I feel I should explain as to why I'm taking it as that setup:

1. Poor range on the Lore.
The Lore of Undeath has a rather poor range, and since you're not Nagash you won't be summoning anything particularly massive anytime soon. So my plan was to mitigate the range issue with flying - get somewhere annoying and place something annoying there.

2. We need Buffs.
A level 4 taking this could have some fun, but let's face it, we need dem buffs and hexes. Be it Maw, Heavens, Beasts or Death, we need our level 4 to be chucking out some very threatening spells. Plus, I don't want to risk a lvl 4 on carpet trying to get close to drop off some skellies.

3. Fire is better than no fire
The above point means I want to use a level 2 caster - and since it's a level 2 Undeath on carpet, might as well go for the option that gives us a Breath weapon and ward against flaming.

4. Pressure
In many situations, summoning a squad of skeleton chaff in an inconvenient place is something your opponent is going to want to stop you doing. Therefore, you've just added in another spell that competes for the attention of your opponent's dispel dice. Always good!



Those are my reasons for this setup, so feel free to consider or disregard them and whatnot. I already have a fairly menacing Flyerbelly model anyhoo, so nothing lost for me here!