Ish

Six players will give you a five-round round robin bracket... But you could also give by rounds.

Ironjawz. But I've only got ~660 Points (the SC box and a Shaman)... I'd have more but I gave in to my daughter's request for a Sylvaneth army of her own. OFCC 2018 is my aspirational goal to keep me on task, painting and building my orcs and not falling down the Eighth Edition rabbit hole.

I only started collecting AoS a few months ago. I am far short of having a 2,000 Point army... But I will definitely try to get into next year's event.

As far as I can see, that's a perfectly kosher list. But, Arkhan can only cast two spells per turn and he's still subject to the Rule of One. So assuming you want to use the occasional Smite / Mystic Shield / Curse of Years, you're looking at only 1-2 units per turn and you cannot summon two of the same unit in one phase.

The way I'm reading the 'Allegiance' box on p. 156 of the GHB combined with the wording of the 'Rineforcement Points' column on p. 108 makes me think that summoned units are sorta "wild cards" when it comes to Allegiance. You pick the models that go into your army up to the agreed upon Point Level of the game, setting aside some reinforcement points if you want. Then you check the keywords of the Warscrolls in your army for possible keyword matches, choosing one. Then you chose your Allegiance bonuses (command trait, magic item, etc.) Then you start play... and you can only Summon once Play has started, at which point you've already locked in your Allegiance. Mind you, other "in play"'abilities that look for specific keywords would still be reliant on those keywords. If I have a Vanilla Allegiance army and summon some Chocolate unit, I'm still Vanilla Allegiance. But if my Cake Lord's Command Trait only effects Vanilla units within 6", then the Chocolate unit isn't effected.

All of that's true, but I happen to like the Citadel models for all of those things anyway.

This is only really an issue in Matched Play; Summoning just happens in Open an Narrative Play, no mucking about with reserved points.

Doesn't really do anything that BattleScribe doesn't do... and BattleScribe works offline.

The Bag O Zombies are for the Zombies! board games. Decent enough sculpts but they are small when compared to most 25 mm scale models, let alone GW's "Heroic Scale" which is probably closer to oversized 32 mm these days (seriously the scale creep has gotten ridiculous over the years). Most zombie minis on the market tend to be sculpts in "modern" clothes, in keeping with the general zombie apocalypse / survival horror genre. Reaper, Ral Partha, and many others make more medieval/fantasy type zombies but they're generally in 1-2 model blisters. The best source of fantasy type zombie hordes in useful scale and quantity for wargaming is probably Mantic's Kings of War undead line. Forty zombies for $40 USD: http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/kings-of-war/undead/product/undead-zombie-swarm-40-figures.html

I'll admit, counter-battery fire isn't something that King Orcthur has given much thought. Yet. I've got a rough sketch for how I want my initial 2,000 Point Army to look and rough plans for what to buy. If I follow through on that I'll actually end up closer to 2,500 Points total as I'll be buying multiple Start Collecting and Skirmish boxes, getting some extra units... I'd been thinking that once that was done, I'd start to add Moonclan Goblins and build them up into a standalone army. But maybe Gitmob is the way to go? (Sigh, if only the PowerBall officials would stop giving other people my millions.)

I've honestly got no clue about the shooting options for other Destruction sub-factions. I've mostly been focusing on the Ironjawz sub-faction and the only ranged attack in the entire allegiance is the "innards bursting bellow" weapon of the Maw-Krusha. A fearsome 8" belch of destruction! ? Looking at a few of the Gitmob Grots entries on the app, the Doomdiver does have a massive range of 6-50" to start, but it drops quickly as the unit takes damage.

Totes OP. GW please nerf. ?

I cannot lend any zombies (or other undead) to your cause... But I'm sure King Orcthur's Knitez of da Waaagh Table would enjoy krumpin' 'em.

Important errata that you should know, however, is that all Orruk Wizards gain a +6 to unbind rolls against Death Wizards. Honest.

Plus, if you don't have any interest in owning the models, you'll probably never bother looking at their Warscroll. Saves time.

The Skeleton Warriors Warscroll says "Death Wizards know the Raise Skeletons spell, in addition to any other spells they know." I don't see any other qualifiers or conditionals in that sentence. Does the model have the Death Wizard keywords? If yes, it knows the spell. If no, it does not.

Yes to the first question. All those Death units that have a summoning spell on them are potential summonable by most of your wizards. You do not have to specify what will be summoned until you try to cast the spell. No to the second question. The points are "spent" as if you were buying the models for your army list. Per the GHB, units are bought in increments of their minimum model count up to their maximum. So if a unit has a minimum five, maximum twenty, you buy it in 5/10/15/20 blocks. Units that are "under strength" still count as the next block, so in my example 8 men would cost the same as ten. (GHB 2 might go to a "per model" point pricing if the rumors are true.)

If that's the rule, then that's the rule. You will be able to act normally in every other phase... You should double check the wording of the rule letting you move in the Hero Phase, to make certain it isn't worded some way like "at the start of your Hero Phase" or something that would mean the summoned unit is ineligible.

I haven't used my old samurai army in AoS, yet. They are all in storage back in Detroit... But not having to keep them in ranks and files will definitely help with positioning. I prefer to play base-to-base, despite what the rules might say.

Just found this:

I'm not 100% certain, but I cannot imagine anyone would object to counting the Screaming Skull Catapult as being part of Deathrattle allegiance. I took a quick look at a few other war machines (Empire Cannon, Grot Rock Lobba, and Ironweld Cannon) and none of the machines had an allegiance keyword, only the crew. As for spears: I have an army of samurai and ashigaru minitures that I used as Empire in WHFB 8th. Amongst the many units was a Horde of one hundred ashigaru with pikes... The first three ranks were modeled in proper "brace for charge" stances. This looked great but made the annoying as hell to actually play with. Enemy models couldn't be placed within 2" of them... and transporting them was a nightmare.

@WestRider: Ironjawz Ardboyz are one of those units that can have mixed weapons. Units of Skeleton Warriors have to have everyone within it wielding either an Ancient Blade or an Ancient Spear, you cannot mix and match. The idea behind it is that there's no need to have two (or more) Warscrolls for units that would otherwise be identical. Having said that, I think you'll find that no one bats an eye if the Champion, Standard Bearer, and Musician in a unit of Skeleton Spearmen are carrying swords in lieu of spears. It works better aesthetically and helps mark out those models as special. Mechanically, they'd still have spears.

I was considering Death (specifically Soulblight / Vampires) for a good while before I settled on Orcs. I thought it would be really neat to build the Mortarch as Neferata but use the bitz intended for Manfred to turn the Stormcast Hero-Dude on the Dragon-Horse from the starter set into a Vampire Lord on Abyssal Terror... Find some suitable legs for Arkhan (Dark Elf?) and turn him into a hero on foot.

Every Warscroll will have a keyword for one of the Grand Alliances – in your case Death - along with keywords for some of the specific "sub factions" we call Allegiances – in this case Deathrattle. If all of the units/models/battalions in you army share a keyword, then you may elect to use that Allegiance. If the units could qualify as more than one Allegiance, you still can only pick one. In your case, an army of nothing but Deathrattle would necessarily also all have the Death keyword. Units from the "Compendium" lists are all models that are no longer in production by GW or are old Special Characters whose models now are marketed as generic Heroes. For example of the first, GW no longer makes any Tomb Kings and they're all in the Compendium now. For an example of the second, Wurzog da Great Green Prophet is now just a generic savage orc shaman. "Compendium" Warscrolls still follow the Allegiance rules. So if Tomb Kings all have the Deathrattle keyword, then they're Deathrattle.

The Death Grand Alliance has some... quirks... at the moment. Several of their most prominent Heroes (e.g. the Mortarchs) are sequestered in an Alliance all their own (Deathlords), some Alliances completely lack Leaders (Deadwalker), and others have no Battleline (Deathmages). Hopefully, this gets fixed in GHB 2.0... But at the moment, you pretty much need to run mixed Death Grand Alliance. You can run "Single Alliance" using only Soulblight, Flesh-Eaters, Deathrattle, Nighthaunt, or Deathrattle... Or you ca go legacy and run Vampire Counts or Tomb Kings, but sourcing models can be tricky.