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 HawaiiMatt wrote:
Sure skeleton horsemen are cheaper.
They also lack 2+ armor and T4. Killing blow and lances is kind of good too. So is the magic banner.

Do you want 10 black knights, or 20 skeleton horsemen?
I'm going with the knight myself.
T3 4+ armor dies so much faster to shooting than T4 2+ armor.

Also keep in mind that Master of the Dark arts is a lot more viable. I'll be running at least 2 beast mages in my mount vamp armies. T5 black knights is beastly.

Agreed, but the core tax is the problem. Can't put wizards in Skelly horse archers due to scouts rule, otherwise we'd be ready to go.

 Acardia wrote:

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
Sure skeleton horsemen are cheaper.
They also lack 2+ armor and T4. Killing blow and lances is kind of good too. So is the magic banner.

Do you want 10 black knights, or 20 skeleton horsemen?
I'm going with the knight myself.
T3 4+ armor dies so much faster to shooting than T4 2+ armor.

Also keep in mind that Master of the Dark arts is a lot more viable. I'll be running at least 2 beast mages in my mount vamp armies. T5 black knights is beastly.

Agreed, but the core tax is the problem. Can't put wizards in Skelly horse archers due to scouts rule, otherwise we'd be ready to go.

Wizards join the black knight bus. Turn 1, they leave the bus to join horse archers. Problem solved.

-Matt

So I've been playing Nagash lists vs various end times lists for an upcoming event. Summoning works pretty well for picking and choosing what to deal with at what time. Last game vs The Glotkin all nurgle force, I summoned 11 crypt horrors, 5 spirit hosts a banshee, a terrorgheist and a Tomb King with DoE.

Keep in mind the event we are going to tossed aside the end times magic rules.

So I was able to drop most of his units except the Glotkin who is pretty tough, I couldn't get a HKB on him with the TK despite doing 3 wounds to him. We did totally miss that he does have a 4+ armour save, so maybe I should have got a forbidden lore metal out.

I think he's pretty manageable except he got two ore attributes right out of the gate which made him a lot tougher.

I've found KFC lists to be not terrible, as they tend to be all mounted, low in numbers, poor static rez, and lacking in magic weapons and ranged, so ethereal summons are great particularly the 4 wraiths, banshee unit, won't kill anything fast but won't lose. Also pretty easy to insulate Nagash with zombies as well.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
Sure skeleton horsemen are cheaper.
They also lack 2+ armor and T4. Killing blow and lances is kind of good too. So is the magic banner.

Do you want 10 black knights, or 20 skeleton horsemen?
I'm going with the knight myself.
T3 4+ armor dies so much faster to shooting than T4 2+ armor.

Also keep in mind that Master of the Dark arts is a lot more viable. I'll be running at least 2 beast mages in my mount vamp armies. T5 black knights is beastly.

Depends what you're putting into the bus. I run two vampire lords in mine, and they generate enough CR to more than make up for the difference.

The real benefit of the horsemen bus is that it's out of core. That gives you ~300-400 points to spend on other hammers with the rest of your points. Given how much awesome choices we have right now you'll be hard pressed to find something that wouldn't work in your list with those points.

I've wrote this list based off of The Black Host bundle, a Vampire Counts battalion and a Tomb Kings battalion. So obviously it's not the most refined list I've added a few extras in like the 2 Necros and Terroghiests. Any suggestions as to where to take the collection from here and any ways to refine this list based on those starter sets?

+++ Undead (2482pts) +++

++ Undead Legions (2014) (Standard) ++

+ Lords +

Tomb King [Shield]
····Magic Items [AB - Blade of Antarhak, BRB - Armour of Fortune, BRB - Dragonbane Gem]

Vampire Lord [Heavy Armour, Lore of the Vampires, Quickblood, Red Fury, Shield, Wizard Level 4, Zombie Dragon]
····Magic Items [BRB - Dragonhelm, BRB - Sword of Battle, BRB - Talisman of Preservation]

+ Heroes +

Necromancer [Lore of the Vampires, Wizard Level 1]
····Magic Items [BRB - Dispel Scroll]

Necromancer [Lore of the Vampires, Wizard Level 1]

+ Core +

Dire Wolves [5x Dire Wolf]

Dire Wolves [5x Dire Wolf]

Skeleton Archers [Musician, 20x Skeleton Archers, Standard Bearer]

Skeleton Archers [Musician, 20x Skeleton Archers, Standard Bearer]

Skeleton Warriors [Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer]
····40x Skeleton Warriors [40x Light Armour, 40x Spears]

+ Special +

Grave Guard [Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer]
····20x Grave Guard [20x Shield]

+ Rare +

Terrorgheist

Terrorgheist

20 GG isn't enough. Drop LA/spears off the skeletons (and take from TK book). I'm also really not a fan of 2 terrorgheists...too obvious...too one-dimensional. Terrorgheists are either balls-insane-awesome or 450 dead points.

I'd also say drop dragonhelm for charmed shield on the VL. Yeah his save drops to 3+ but BS shooting will be distributed mostly to the T6 ZD anyways. Cannons and stonethrowers are a bigger concern. Also I wouldn't take Sword of battle...I'd rather go for Nightshroud or the Ogre Blade. Alternatively GW+Book of Arkhan+Tal of Pres+charmed shield+OTS.

So now that Undead Legions have been out this long, what do you guys feel are some of the new "standard" Legion builds?

Seems like the old VC screamer list is still a thing; as well as a monster mash and summoning list.

What else is working for everyone?

omerakk wrote:
So now that Undead Legions have been out this long, what do you guys feel are some of the new "standard" Legion builds?

Seems like the old VC screamer list is still a thing; as well as a monster mash and summoning list.

What else is working for everyone?

You may not get much response. The end times has been rapidly changing army restrictions, army lists, magic, and the meta. Under the 50% lords restriction and using the end times magic I have found a summoning list centered around nagash with a bunch of zombie, dogs, and hero vampire zombie/dog generators (plus a few TK casting buffs) is a little much for my opponents.

Without end times magic the number of casters needs to be scaled down and the list becomes much more manageable for my opponents. If I want to go extreme with these rules then I will start throwing in a lot of vampire blender lords into the list.

With the 25% lords restriction then I usually concentrate more on one really good caster lord and some zombie and dog units to tie stuff up. Some of the better lists I have seen have involved different buffing units, grave guard, and a tomb prince.

What all that means is that I don't think there is even a common meta and there certainly isn't a handful of lists that will work for all of these. This is good because it shakes things up but bad for ease to talk about online.

I have found the most important units are;
1) The cheaper/better vampire counts melee units (zombies, dogs, grave guard, vampires, spirit hosts, etc.) which provide you with a much weightier hammers and anvils than the TK have.
2) The superior harassment units from TK; Skelly Archers, Skelly Archer Horsemen, Skelly Chariots, catapult, etc. These help to soften units, win the positioning war, and generate combat res.
3) The layers of buffing magics and units available; Casket of Souls, Heirotitan, TK princes, vampire abilities, magic, corpse carts, black coaches, etc. If you get even a few turns with these different buffs layered you can beat up most enemies with just zombie units...which is crazy. With the ability to layer so many different buffs your opponent has to start reacting to you and going after key units rather than any unit they want.
4) Lots of big monsters. I love fielding monsters. I now have good monster choices in rare, special, hero, and lords. We also have some great harassment, anvils, and combat res generators in the core so I don't have to waste points on junk.

The biggest thing the Undead Legions has done is open up the entire gamut of options. The only true netlist, is no netlist (something Tomb Kings players have been playing with for a while). However, the End Times magic modifications, and the Undead Legions rules (both as separate entities, that is) have made some lists which were worse, into equal contenders- such as the 'action figures' striding statuary Tomb King list with lots of constructs.

I don't think we're going to start to see typical lists until the rules settle down.
Gaining access to twice as many units, twice as much character points, and a whole new magic system, and now formations, has made typical non-existent.
I literally go through what rules to use before the game, and see a mix of the end times rules being used.

We'll have to wait for 9th edition, or at least for most players to agree on a format before you can really talk about what's best.

In general, swapping vampire core for TK core is the only constant that I've seen. Even then, I've played around with WS5 ghouls and been impressed.

-Matt

The trouble with talking about ET lists is that there's been so little consistency in terms of how tournament organizers are treating End Times content. This makes it really hard to get in the sort of crowd-sourced list tweaking that leads to the creation of a "netlist" build.

That means that the collective wisdom of the Undead Legions is still very much in its infancy. You have VC players approaching the list from a vampire-centric approach, basically just adding in a casket and substituting cheaper TK core. Then you have TK players building their own standard lists, merely substituting a few VC options here or there to compliment them (but primarily taking UL for marching).

Compounding this is that the ET are changing the meta so rapidly that it's hard to figure out what we need to run. When we were the only combined list on the block the gamut of available options was open to us. Now that there's Chaos Legions, Host of the Eternity King, and big baddies like KFA, Malekith, and Nagash on the scene, the pool of competitive options has shrunk in order to allow us to "keep up with the Jones's," so to speak.

Personally, I won't leave home without a pair of vampire lords in any sort of uncomped UL list. I think they provide the greatest flexibility in terms of what we bring to the table.