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So I just piked up a Tomb Kings book and I was hoping for some suggestions on where to start. How good are the Tomb Guard? are the Ushabti worth it at 65 pts a model? Should I go Core heavy, or just fill out my core requirements and move on to special? are the Calvary any good? I've only ever played against Tomb Kings once and I don't remember what he used other than the Scorpions.

Tomb Guard with the Icon of Rakaph can charge in any direction which is just lethal. I'm not a huge fan of the calvary and like most armies you'll probably just fill out your core and then load up on all the cool stuff.

Tomb Guard are not worth it. When causing fear, you either win combats because you're a nasty uber monster in combat, OR you win because you barely eeked out a 1 combat res win, and outnumbered your opponent, and he ran away because he couldn't roll double ones.
TG are too expensive to go after the outnumber, and don't do well at being combat monsters.

Ushabiti are point for point the best ogre models in the game. Every other ogre out there has ws3 and needs a great weapon to get to str6. Meaning in battles of attrition you'll strike first, hit on 3's and wound on 2's against most everything. Couple that with a 15inch effective range, and the ability to heal yourself, and even Dragon Ogres are needing to get lucky to win a heads up ogre battle. These guys also wreck Cavalry, and can mince most RnF units.

Carrion are seXXXy. 40 inch effective range. Find a war-machine and let them go on the FIRST TURN.... fun for the whole family

I like to only buy one scorpion. Mostly because I don't need 2 to win.

I like both of the rares, but I Try not to buy more than one. Although, now that I think about it, the army I took to the GT and got best general with had a Giant, and a Stone Thrower.

Core is the way to go with Tomb Kings armies, it may not seem like it, but your Core is pure win.

Do an experiment for me. Take one of your opponents special units. Saaaay Greatswords perhaps 25 man unit. Take your Heavy cavalry in a 5x3 formation with the warbanner. Charge them in from 24 inches away, and laugh as that crazy unit of stubborn nutters rolls something other than double ones and runs away.

If you're worried about surviveablility, give them the banner of the undying leigion.

If you want the uber toughest nut ever, give them the warbanner, and put an Icon Bearer in the unit with the banner of the undying leigon. It's expensive at around 450 points, but egads... they'll be dragging 5 banners with then at the end of a 6 turn game. Pure silly.

Don't ever,ever, ever get a BsB

..and you get 2 tomb guard for less than 3 comparably equipped skeletons (who have issues fighting wet paper sacks)so no they are not over costed...And great weapon nurgle minotaurs are waaaaay better than ushabti

Bat Manuel wrote:

Don't ever,ever, ever get a BsB

..and you get 2 tomb guard for less than 3 comparably equipped skeletons (who have issues fighting wet paper sacks)so no they are not over costed...And great weapon nurgle minotaurs are waaaaay better than ushabti

Never ever? Tell you what, if you build the army with the understanding that the BSB is there for a reason, and the reason is NOT to supplement your losing, and that is instead a bonus... he is worth it. I designed an ICFB army here a while back that depended on chariots and the banner of the hidden dead, and it was competitive, and i managed to learn exactly what he does well.

Tomb guard will only ever attract the attention of things that wtf pwn them. If your opponent is going after them with things that they beat, well he's playing a horde list, and the TK's are in trouble anyway, or he's mentally slowed. Yes I said it, if you're successful with your guard, your opponent is a bad player.

Yeah, nurgle mino's don't suck either. River Trolls give them hell too, BUT, 4 ushabti should still beat 4 nurgletards because they can be healed.

The BSB is bad for several reasons:
1. Crap stats (hopefully next book they give prince the standard or they check out wight king for reference)
2. Poor selection of bsb-magic banners (most of the useful stuff can be give to basic units already)
3. The most important one: BSB means 1 less caster and TK live and die by their magic...

I think also that Ragnar4 seriously underestimates the Tomb Guard. They are the best tarpit unit that tomb kings can have and in addition have ok attack power especially vs things that can be kb'd. Obviously they should always be 20+ so to get full ranks and have the icon of rakaph for extra mobility. It has to mentioned also that the unit works best in a bodyguard(ish) role if there's a king on foot there for possible slingshotting/magic & combat support.

I'm not saying that Ushbati are bad (altough they sure are expensive), just noting that guard and them cannot be directly compared easily as they do different things.

Look, I understand that the BSB is limited. Hell I wrote a series of articles for Damommasboyz.com when they came out and I decried the BSB to be a total waste of points.

BUT with A) The new rules suggesting that his +1 to combat can be added to a banner bonus in a unit, and
B) the refusal to believe that there is anything in our list that "sucks" and that is "not worth it" I set out to come up with a list that utilizes his strengths. Took down an RT with it along with a couple of other tournaments in a *very* competative group.

Tomb Kings lists are IMHO MORE competitive with only 3 caster characters. Because you're limiting the amount of points spent on characters, and focusing on your bread and butter units. So using a BSB is a bit of a points sink, but utilizing the Banner of the Hidden Dead well justifies his points.

I highly doubt that I'm underestimating the Tomb Guard, I've played with them in competitive environments, taken them to GT's and they have never been capable of what I needed them to be capable of. I used them for about 6 months solid of a game a week on average, plus 2 tournaments including a GT. I finished in the middle of the pack.... which is odd... Because the year prior, I didn't use Tomb Guard, and finished with a Best General award. TG are points prohibitive... to be blunt, when you buy Tomb Guard, you're wasting points you could be spending on other utility type units.

Not many DoC-armies around then at your area? (that, or you play with heavily restricted/comped enviroment, which is actually pretty wise at the current state of whfb). Just referencing to your tournament success, as I see TK having a really hard time vs the DoC powerbuilds excluding lucky shots from dual catapults.

Regarding the TG/BSB issue, if the stuff you're using works for you, then that's good I guess. Have fun and bask in your tournament winning glory then.

Nope.

I'm kicking 4 DoC armies and Every flavor of elves around, rather consistently, and I only struggle with Vamp Counts, but that's just a tough matchup. It sucks that the game becomes a hide and seek game between my Heirophant and his vamp. But that's what they wanted it to be at GW.

Everyone whines about how OP their opponents are, when they could better spend their energy trying to figure out their opponents weaknesses and systematically trying to take advantage of them.

Edited out: Sorry, I was taking this conversation more seriously than I should have. Hadn't read all the above before replying. Ragnar4, I don't believe you, but you've provided my new sig. Quite possibly the most dense error to word ratio of any sentence I've read in a while.

Well I'm glad I could help you in some way, shape, or form with my post 40kenthusiast. I've never claimed that punctuation has ever been a strong point. It is kinda funny now that I Read it.

You don't have to believe me. I'm not asking you to.

I really would have liked to see what you had to say though, seems it may have been scathing. I find it hard to believe, though, that you would argue that because you may struggle, or percieve that I do struggle against those armies, that you are right.

I've said it once, I'll say it 100 times more. It's not your army that wins you the battle, its your skills. Anyone that blames a loss or a win "on the dice" really ought to spend more time improving their skills.

Sometimes a matchup will produce a glaring weakness in your army, but oftentimes, that weakness in your own army will force you to commit to the battle in some unorthodox manner that gives you the greatest opportunity to win. (Gunlines defeated by Hide and Seek, Headhunting a vampire/heirophant, etc..)

Anyway, all this stemming from my argument that Tomb Guard are not worth the points spent on them, and there are other, better ways to spend the points, and the special slot. You guys really love your Mywayhammer around here. I'm cool with that.

Ragnar4 wrote:Nope.

I'm kicking 4 DoC armies and Every flavor of elves around, rather consistently, and I only struggle with Vamp Counts, but that's just a tough matchup. It sucks that the game becomes a hide and seek game between my Heirophant and his vamp. But that's what they wanted it to be at GW.

Everyone whines about how OP their opponents are, when they could better spend their energy trying to figure out their opponents weaknesses and systematically trying to take advantage of them.

Mmm, yeah...
How about a battle report? Not that I'm gonna jump on a plane and come to prove you wrong or anything. Still, would be interesting to read how the game would go vs the point'n'click thirster army for example. (in 2k:thirster /w flaming,rerolls,armor,scroll;flying tz bsb /w stubborn,master,tz herald /w scroll,master,3xhorrors,2xflesh hounds,flamers,extra stuff such as a unit of furies depending on the amount of leftover points).

Also, if you play vs high elves, what do you do vs star dragon /w armor of caledor (ie immune to ssc)?

This is a very nice read ( i have TK army and never ever played a single game yet )

TK have so many variety of core troops, its confusing to figure out what to take!

skeleton with basic hand weapon + shield?
archers?
calvary?
charriots?

Mind boggling!

Ragnar,

To say that dice NEVER can be responsible for a win or loss is kind of ridiculous. You can set up a very high percentage situation and still fluff a round of combat, then the break tests, then the flee, etc, etc.

I just think that's a rather flippant blanket statement to make regarding a game that contains a significant element of chance.

RZ

Chaoslord wrote:

Ragnar4 wrote:Nope.

I'm kicking 4 DoC armies and Every flavor of elves around, rather consistently, and I only struggle with Vamp Counts, but that's just a tough matchup. It sucks that the game becomes a hide and seek game between my Heirophant and his vamp. But that's what they wanted it to be at GW.

Everyone whines about how OP their opponents are, when they could better spend their energy trying to figure out their opponents weaknesses and systematically trying to take advantage of them.

Mmm, yeah...
How about a battle report? Not that I'm gonna jump on a plane and come to prove you wrong or anything. Still, would be interesting to read how the game would go vs the point'n'click thirster army for example. (in 2k:thirster /w flaming,rerolls,armor,scroll;flying tz bsb /w stubborn,master,tz herald /w scroll,master,3xhorrors,2xflesh hounds,flamers,extra stuff such as a unit of furies depending on the amount of leftover points).

Also, if you play vs high elves, what do you do vs star dragon /w armor of caledor (ie immune to ssc)?

Yeah I've got a long weekend. 40k tournament on saturday that I'm prepping for, but I could come up with a BR for the last Stardragon army I flipped. It has a tombkings BSB that is featured! Gasp!

As for the pointnclick thirster army, the last one I played, I rolled with my point and click brettonian army, but I got into a nasty collison afterwards and I don't have much memory of it. I do know that Grail Knights kill bloodthirsters well, and I also remember that killing blow against large creatures came in particularly handy. Other than that... I'm a little blank

I haven't had the opportunity to test my mettle against that army since, (I've moved since then to a different city) The only guy that plays Khrone Daemons doesn't like the dual-thirster route.

@red. I didn't say that dice can never be responsible for a win. While I know that there is no such thing as luck, I also understand that variance can sometimes bite you. I just make the choice not to, and if I lose, I go over my game and try to determine where I made my mistake, and figure out if there's anything I could have done better.

Against Bill Edwards(name drop, I know... I dont' know about the last 2 years, but prior to that, he owned the GT circuit.) at my last GT I honestly can't think of any one thing I'd rather do differently. Which stinks, because he beat me pretty soundly and I was 2-0 at that point..

I have no idea what's going on, but it's funny

Quite possibly the most dense error to word ratio of any sentence I've read in a while

classic, i love it

Speaking in terms of tomb guard vs everything else...
Tomb guard are marginally better than skeletons in combat. The toughness 4, str 4, killing blow helps against a number of oponents but skeletons will generally have +1 rank (tomb guard get one rank shot off), and numbers because of the cost of the models. In general tomb guard will come out even against skeleton equilivant models. The banner of raulph (or whatever it is) gives them a huge edge but they still arent the killing monsters that people expect them to be for their points. To be truly effective they need both the banner and a char with destroyer. However, this unit now costs upwards of 500 pts and still isnt that great.
For the cost you can get 8 or so ubshapti which are arguably far superior.

In a gerenal tomb king army I would maximize the str of the army. Fast units with lots of magical movement.
Something along the lines of
king, chariot of fire, some of other stuff
hirophant, fly, other things
priest
priest on horse
15 medium cav, war banner
4 chariot, full cmd
5 chariots, banner of undying legion
2x tomb swarm
2x scorpions
2x4-5 ubshapti
2x catapult (for the big nastys out there)

This army moves very fast, hits prety hard and can go toe to toe with most power armies out there. It is quite good imo.

As for the BSB. Yea unless you have a really good purpose in mind (banner of reform in a unit of chariots is prety cool) then he is pretty terrible

Ragnar4 wrote:I've said it once, I'll say it 100 times more. It's not your army that wins you the battle, its your skills. Anyone that blames a loss or a win "on the dice" really ought to spend more time improving their skills.

Ragnar4 wrote:
@red. I didn't say that dice can never be responsible for a win. While I know that there is no such thing as luck, I also understand that variance can sometimes bite you. I just make the choice not to, and if I lose, I go over my game and try to determine where I made my mistake, and figure out if there's anything I could have done better.

It sure seems like you did.

And a single dice roll certainly can win or lose the game. A bad miscast can easily cost someone the game. Or a big unit falling a panic test and running off the board. I've had plenty of close games where a result could be traced to a single dice roll.

Vengis wrote:

Ragnar4 wrote:I've said it once, I'll say it 100 times more. It's not your army that wins you the battle, its your skills. Anyone that blames a loss or a win "on the dice" really ought to spend more time improving their skills.

Ragnar4 wrote:
@red. I didn't say that dice can never be responsible for a win. While I know that there is no such thing as luck, I also understand that variance can sometimes bite you. I just make the choice not to, and if I lose, I go over my game and try to determine where I made my mistake, and figure out if there's anything I could have done better.

It sure seems like you did.

And a single dice roll certainly can win or lose the game. A bad miscast can easily cost someone the game. Or a big unit falling a panic test and running off the board. I've had plenty of close games where a result could be traced to a single dice roll.

Believe it or not, I have an example.

Dark Elves V.S. Brets, 1,000 points.

My Sorceress had just died on turn 2 and his unit of knights declared a charge on my Cold One Knights. I was sure that I'd lost the game already, seeing as my Spearmen and Corsairs couldn't beat the Bret's armor saves. His knights failed the fear check, fled through another unit of knights, which ran off the board, then my other unit easily double-teamed the remaining Knights. Me and my friend still talk about it, after a good 3 months.


Regardless, advice-wise I'd suggest getting a Casket of Souls. It not only looks cool but I've heard some good things about it.

Vengis wrote:

Ragnar4 wrote:I've said it once, I'll say it 100 times more. It's not your army that wins you the battle, its your skills. Anyone that blames a loss or a win "on the dice" really ought to spend more time improving their skills.

Ragnar4 wrote:
@red. I didn't say that dice can never be responsible for a win. While I know that there is no such thing as luck, I also understand that variance can sometimes bite you. I just make the choice not to, and if I lose, I go over my game and try to determine where I made my mistake, and figure out if there's anything I could have done better.

It sure seems like you did.

And a single dice roll certainly can win or lose the game. A bad miscast can easily cost someone the game. Or a big unit falling a panic test and running off the board. I've had plenty of close games where a result could be traced to a single dice roll.

It's fine, you guys go on ahead and blame your losses on luck, if it's what makes you happy. I'll blame my losses on myself, that's just how I roll, because it's what makes me happy.

Every boxer's got a plan how he'll approach a fight from the moment he realizes he's gonna be in it. The question is: Does the plan survive the first time he gets punched? For the good to mediocre boxers, not really, but for the great boxers, you'd better believe it.

I'm not saying that planning isn't important, I'm just saying that it is possible for a win to come out of good or bad dice. It doesn't apply to everything, but denying it's possible is just silly.

Ragnar4 wrote:

It's fine, you guys go on ahead and blame your losses on luck, if it's what makes you happy. I'll blame my losses on myself, that's just how I roll, because it's what makes me happy.

Every boxer's got a plan how he'll approach a fight from the moment he realizes he's gonna be in it. The question is: Does the plan survive the first time he gets punched? For the good to mediocre boxers, not really, but for the great boxers, you'd better believe it.

I love the way you subtly put others down while raising yourself up.

Also, I've heard that Tomb Kings are very extremist, meaning that you're either playing really defensive style TK or real offensive TK. It's up to you, really.


But regardless of your playing style, Tomb Scorpions rule. No questions asked.

@ Vengis: Don't you? I do as well.

Sorry, gonna go off topic a bit:

Vengis wrote:

Ragnar4 wrote:

It's fine, you guys go on ahead and blame your losses on luck, if it's what makes you happy. I'll blame my losses on myself, that's just how I roll, because it's what makes me happy.

Every boxer's got a plan how he'll approach a fight from the moment he realizes he's gonna be in it. The question is: Does the plan survive the first time he gets punched? For the good to mediocre boxers, not really, but for the great boxers, you'd better believe it.

I love the way you subtly put others down while raising yourself up.

@Vengis: Same here.

@Ragnar4: There's a difference between boxing and playing a game based on dice-rolls. With the former, it is all about skill. If you let a punch hit you, it was from a fault of your for not keeping your guard up well enough. With the latter, you're playing a game of chance, and good players will see to it that the odds of success are in their favor. That being said, there's always at least a 1 in 6 chance of failure with anything. You can be the best tactician/strategist around, but, if you keep rolling all 1's (or even an uncharacteristically high number of 1's, as I have in many games) it's hard to say that you failed through faults of your own.

I apologize if it seems like I'm antagonizing you, but you are coming off as condescending and contradictory with your comments about the element of luck in the game. I'd like to stress that I agree with your points that skill is the biggest factor to wins/losses. However, don't be so obnoxiously dismissive of bad dice rolling. It happens. It's not something that anyone can choose to avoid, and it's not something that a person can "improve".


Back on topic:
Definitely, definitely take advantage of the speed of the army. I'm not so familiar with the cavalry that the TK field, but the chariot units are definitely great at causing havoc to your opponent's lines. Sure, they only cause D3 S4 Impact Hits a piece, but with 4-5 Chariots, that's likely to be 8 Hits on average. Unless you play against a lot of artillery, a unit with the Banner of Undying Legion is likely to make it to the enemy at full strength.

Tomb Scorpions and Tomb Swarms are both fun and can be quite good at handling enemy artillery.

My bad.

I actually lump myself in with the guys who's plans don't stay intact, but I strive to be the guy who's plan DOES stay intact.

I just have a very strong opinion and I'm willing to jump up and down about it. You guys are good guys didn't mean to offend.

On topic. I love carrion for Warmachines as much as I love Scorpions.

Even in competitive sports like American Football or Baseball, games come down to a lucky bounce of the ball. Go to youtube and look up the immaculate reception and tell me that wasn't luck. sometimes you execute your plans perfectly and the dice go against you. I was playing my dwarfs in one tournament and rolled a misfire one one of my cannons. "no problem, I planned for this" I said to myself. I have the rune of forging and can re-roll that. alas I rolled a second misfire. I rolled a one, re-rolled it as well and still blew up my cannon in turn one of a game. the really sad thing is that I did the exact same thing in the same turn with my other cannon. and it was the first turn. ever seen a Dwarf player blow up Thorek on turn one? it happened to me. and believe me if you bring thorek he is VITAL to you winning the game.

My tomb kings have been doing pretty well recently-magic heavy lizzies, daemons and VC are still tough though...

To the OP: Tomb kings are a strange army-methodical and relentless. They have some very strong tricks up their sleeves but also a lot of weaknesses. They are also quite a rare army which means quite often your opponent won't have played tomb kings for a long time-this is when they are at their best =P.

In theory that they are a combat army with not much combat punch at all, using shooting to soften up tough things. Only tomb kings/princes (to a lesser extent), bone giants and scorpions have any real strength in combat-chariots can smash infantry but will bounce off knights.

The most important thing is to make a plan for your magic phase and set it in motion 1-2 turns in advance. Keeping characters alive is the number 1 priority..without magic your army is garbage.

I don't personally recommend:bone giants, casket of souls, heavy cav, high lich priests or Ushabti at 2000 points. All are very expensive for what they do and are mediocre. Catapults are brilliant-I recommend 2, with or without skulls of the foe (a lot of ITP armies around these days, so perhaps saving points is more useful). King and 3 priests is fairly standard character setup. A unit of bowman to bunker a lich priest or two near the catapults is also handy. They should definately have steeds. Light horseman are handy units to get in the way and protect priests as well.

Swarms are excellent war machine hunters/distraction units. They have so many uses..as does the scorpion.
Carrion are also brilliant.

Now a lot of people don't like tomb guard..they are expensive, pretty sucky for elite infantry and expensive to buy model wise. However my army funnily enough includes 2 units of 20 of them. A lot of people see them at the start of the game and assume ah easy points or I'll avoid them. But then they realise the fun that is guessing which unit has the free reform banner =P. This opens up a whole another bluffing game and is very enjoyable to watch your opponent squirm going anywhere near the centre of your army, incase you charge him with a ranked up block of tomb guard (not many units can beat them if they don't charge, especially with tomb king support). They never let me down, and both of them with the king are pretty much 850 points which I never have to worry about dieing bar a disaster. I take the summoning banner or war banner on the 2nd one.

Most importantly for tomb kings I'd get used to playing with them and losing lots. You WILL lose a lot of games to start with tomb kings..they are very unforgiving but once you practise a bit you will pick up some tricks and be able to think ahead more and more...a well played tomb kings army can give any 7th edition book a run for their money =].

You know JPR. While you and I sing a little bit of a different tune about the units we swear by, I love the last paragraph you posted. Because I feel the same way.. You sir, are a voice of reason in a storm tears.

Big ups friend, big ups indeed.

http://www.dysartes.com/tactics/whfb/tacticatombkings.php is a decent tactica to get you started.

In general, if you like a more magic/shooty list or a close combat list it determines what Lord you take and the rest of your army.