The "list"

Well, there isn't one really.  Age of Sigmar has (in)famously done away with points and army lists to let people collect exactly what they want.  I have always found I do need a specific goal to aim for when creating an army in order to have a sense of the project progressing.

The formations provided for each army are a nice way of focusing a list to a theme with a nice game bonus but sadly one hasn't yet been created for the malignant forces.  Well, except for the one in the starter box but I'm not planning on picking this up (though I would have done if it had come out before Xmas ...grumble grumble...).

Instead I asked at my local shop how people are playing games and the manager said they aim for 50 wound games, nice and simple.  So...on to the list:

Spirit Hosts: As the bulk of the army I think I will go for 3 units of these.  At 9 wounds for 3 stands                          that is 27/50 used up.

Tomb Banshee: Something a bit more fun and a ranged attack. 4 wounds takes me to 31/50

Cairn Wraith: Brilliant model and is there anything more iconic than a floating spectre with a great                            big dirty scythe to go through the enemy? 4 wounds again. 35/50.

Hexwraiths: Ghostly cavalry always look great and the unit would give me a bit more flexibility on                          the field.  a unit for 5 figures equals 10 wounds. 45/50

Now then, I have 5 wounds remaining but I am missing a rather large piece of the puzzle.  A magic user!  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Undead were my first ever Warhammer army, back at the dawn of 4th edition and since then (and actually in earlier editions) you have HAD to have magic user in an Undead army, to keep all the bones and spirits together and also to bring more to the fight when it inevitiably goes wrong.

The magic users currently available for the Death faction are the Necromancer and the Lich Priest (disregarding Special Characters).  Neither which are malignants and neither of which have a spell relevant to malignants! There is the Mortis Engine which does also cover this but I am holding off on getting one until my force is a bit more complete.

I think I am just going to have to bite the bullet and pick up a Necromancer for the force, the only mortal on the field of battle! At 5 wounds they would perfectly round out the army to 50 wounds.

Plus, I have a plan to convert the model a bit to base them on someone...

Malignants?

So with the decision made to create a Death alliance army I wanted to give it a real focus.  When creating armies I like to limit the number of unit types to choose from to really keep the theme through it.

For this one, I wanted to do an army that was impossible in 8th edition Warhammer and do a 100% ghost army.  This was probably influenced by the fact it was winter, which is my favourite time to sit and read ghost stories (or watch the brilliant Ghost Stories for Christmas) as well as the ease I would be able to paint them

Going through the warscrolls  it appeared the units that would be most suited would be Spirit Hosts for the bulk of the force, Cairn Wraiths and Tomb Banshees for characters as well as Hexwraiths as the obligatory ghostly horsemen.  I would need a magic user to summon all of these lost souls to the battlefield but I hadn't made my mind up which one yet.

Now, I was going to call my army a "Ghost" army, but the warscrolls all seemed to have a certain Keyword; Malignant.  Ahh, so that is what I was collecting, a Malignant army!  I suppose this will cover any and all spirits, ghosts etc. that will be brought out for the Death armies and suits me down to the ground.  This was confirmed with the announcement of the Star Collecting Malignants box coming from GW.

(I realise this post has a lot of links to the GW shop but this purely to show EXACTLY what miniatures I am going to be collecting.)

The beginning

When Age of Sigmar (AoS) launched in July 2015 I was excited.  I hadn't played Warhammer Fantasy Battles for a number of years and, other than splitting the Isle of Blood Starter Set, I hadn't spent anything on the figures or rules for probably around 5 years. It was mainly 40K and many other 3rd party skirmish and historical war games.

Now, however, was an excuse to start my fantasy gaming afresh and from the very beginnings of a new system.  With half an ear on the rumours I had been collecting a Chaos Daemon army for the last year with half a mind to use them for the "new" Warhammer, if the prophesised move to round bases occured.

Well, it did, and I had an army ready to go for AoS from day zero and took them to Warhammer World on launch day to try the game out.  Well, I enjoyed it immensely, had fun pushing my figures about and went home a happy bunny.

However, then nothing happened. I didn't get another game in until around November (which again, I enjoyed despite being flattened) but I did decide to pick up the various books that were being published by Black Library as well as listen to the Mortal Realms podcast.  This brought the inspiration flooding back.

As winter drew in and Christmas approached I decided what would really get me going would be to create a brand new army from scratch, something designed JUST for AoS and collected to follow on with the story line.  I wanted to go back to my first ever Warhammer army (back in the dawn of 4th) and create an army of the Undead.

Or should I say...Death?