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Finally I've come to a decision. I intend to buy everything at once, and spend as long as it takes getting everything going (and would be happy to provide before and after shots, the usual). Before that can happen, I need a real army list, so this is my proposal, tear it apart and tell me why it sucks. Consider this the alpha version.


Lords:
Tomb King – 170
-Flail 3
-Wizard Hat 100

Lords Total - 270

Heroes:
Liche Priest – 115
-Casket of Souls 165
-Dispel Scroll 25
-Brooch of the Great Desert 25

Heroes Total – 435

6 Chariots – 240
-Musician 10
-Standard bearer 20
-War Banner 10
-Champion 20

6 Chariots - 240
-Musician 10
-Standard bearer 20
-Icon of the Sacred Eye 50
-Champion 20

1 Tomb Swarm - 45

Core Total – 730

15 Tomb Guard - 180
- Musician 6
-Standard bearer 12
-Mirage Standard 40

Tomb Scorpion – 85
Tomb Scorpion – 85
3 Ushabti - 195

Special Total - 603

Screaming Skull Catapult – 110

Rare Total – 110

Grand Total – 1999


Given that the Tomb Kings are from what I hear, slightly under-powered in most areas, I don't want to go head to head with anything. The plan here is to sweep them in the magic phase, using the Tomb King, Liche Priest and Altar to spam too many spells/incantations for the enemy to cancel. That should let me throw buffs where they're needed. I don't have much of an anvil, just the Tomb Guard really. I'm hoping the Altar's effect, and three coins marking where the scorpions could emerge will be sufficient crowd control. The Ushabti are hard hitters and good soak, the chariots are very hard hitters in the first round on the charge (impact hits + spears), and when the scorpions pop out they should raise some hell.

The only reason that scarab swarm exists is to give me the three core units I need, though it has the happy bonus effect of giving me a third coin to better obfuscate where the scorpions emerge. I would take a second catapult, but the Altar counts as a rare choice (I think the points still go to Heroes though, either way I'm fine).

Alright, that's all, give me hell.

First, your thinking in 7th edition. In 8th everything in your army comp is based off % of points.

Your Lords can be 25%. Your heroes can be 25%. Your Core MUST be at least 25%. Special can be 50%. Rare can be 25%.

You can have two copies of each rare choice until 3000 points, then it goes up. But your list is for 2000 points, so here's what I'd do.

(Note, the Altar counts as either lord or hero points, depening on whether its a priest or high priest sitting on it.)


My thoughts on your army are quite many. At 2k points its hard to run a TK with a hat and put him in a chariot core. Everything costs too many points and you need to get those chariots all the help they can get, since according to our PM's, you aren't sold on the archers. In this case drop the hat. It's one of the few times I'll say it, but your going to need a stabby lord in there to help those chariots out. The armor and weapon I recommended do that well, and protect your valuable chariots. Scorpion Armor may be an item that should be reserved for paper mache skeleton warriors, but I think it's worth experimenting with alongside your chariots.

The armor is the big thing. If the enemy attacks your chariots, your going to take some wounds. If you didnt break them on the charge, your return attacks wont do a lot of damage (especially if you keep the wizard king.) If you get outrezzed, you crumble and take wounds. The armor lets you take half of your total crumble wounds and convert them to a single wound on your Tomb King. This is a good thing, especially with multi wound chariots that you want to keep around. The spear lets you regen wounds either on the unit or the king.

Your priest was bloated and with the points saved from the hat and the scrolls you can have a second priest and still keep your casket. A naked priest is okay, as generally they die in combat no matter how many points of crap you put into them.

I got rid of the single base swarm, as you dont need 3 choices of core, but rather a certain %. (Although I think there is still a two unit minimum.) I dropped the expensive banners as well. They're nice, but only when you really have nowhere else to spend points or they make up some grand design. Icon of the Sacred Eye isnt that great for chariots because you have a small number of attacks anyways. And 1 can only have 1 magic banner in your core anyways, thanks to some dumb TK rules. the War Banner actually costs 35 points to TK's, btw. Not 10. You might consider combining the two units of chariots to being 2 ranks of 5 so can break their rank bonus.

Scorpions are good. Take both catapults, you have two priests to extra shoot them now anyways. Take either Ushabti or Tomb Guard. If you take a unit then take it for real. Dont half ass. 15 TG and 3 Ush will do nothing.

Just my 2 cents bro.


2000.0 Pts - Tomb Kings Roster


Tomb King - 303 points.

Spear of Antarhak, Scorpion Armor, Dragonbane Gem, Ironcurse Icon, Chariot, Shield

Liche Priest - Casket - 280
Liche Priest - Naked - 115


6 Chariots, Full Command - 290 points.
6 Chariots, Full Command - 290 points.


Special: 440 or 495

Icon Bearer with Gamblers Armor in unit of 20 Tomb Guard with full command OR 5 Ushabti 3x2.

Tomb Scorpion - 85 points.
Tomb Scorpion - 85 points.


Warmachines: 180 points.

Catapult
Catapult

Total Roster Cost: 1998 ( TG with icon bearer ) or 1953 (Ushabti )

I had actually kind of avoided this thread, Squash, because I have almost nothing good to say about this list.

Here's the problem: Chariots have to win on the charge, or the melt. There are very few units that they can get in against in today's Warhammer world that puts you in a dominating position. As lists shift further and further to depending on deep, fortified battle-lines with standard bearers protecting them, the more worthless Chariots become other than being a mechanism in which you deliver a character to kill large point objective.

If you were to keep your list all chariots/light cav, you might be able to draw his line out, and then race around him killing his war-machines, and then play keep away all game.

But your list is dis-jointed. Instead of having balance, the list has a standard force element, and then a high-speed element (which has a footprint the size of a small pickup truck on the board btw)

So let's say you want to play this "dust in the wind game" he just marches his battle line down your throat, claims your slow element and then wins because you can't recoup the losses. God help you if he picks off your catapult and casket with flyers and then sits back and laughs at you. Or gets some face-melting unit in combat with your chariots through a lucky charge... (I hate that term.. lucky charge. Screw the random charge rules.)

If you're going to buy a list all at one time, you need to commit to a cohesive strategy before even writing your list. The strategy you want right now doesn't fit tactically with your army list.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Something to chew on while you make your list.

Since most armies are going to have a lvl4 wiz, spamming small casts is > than depending on large casts if you want to dominate in your phase. Therefore more kings/princes, less priests/caskets. This is because 1's and 2's always fail with an exceedingly finite number of dice.

Not wanting to commit head to head except in the most extreme of circumstances is a strategy that must be committed to fully.

Units that do this well: Bone Giants, Chariots, Ushabti, Light Cav, Heavy Cav (don't let the haters tell you they suck, put a 5x3 unit of heavy cav in the flank of any 1 attack unit and then roll 4 or 5 combat rounds with it and come to your OWN conclusions), carrion, tomb scorpions.

Units that don't do that well: Everything else.

The list I rolled in 7th ed that played this exact way
1 king, chariot
2 princes chariots
1 liche priest on a horse
1 unit light cav
3 units of chariots (3 strong)
2 scorpions
1 bone giant
4 ushabit

Once I figured the list out, it was pretty much unstoppable. The problem is any grind it out situations where I couldn't respond to a bounced charge with another charge = me losing the GAME. How do we fix this? No clue. Perhaps 6 ushabti?

I'm having a hard time finding a valid core choice. I don't see the value in skeleton archers, their damage output is awful and enemies will tear them apart. Tomb Scarabs actually have a pretty damn good damage output, but even with 5 wounds they're incredibly fragile, and can't take musicians or standards. The cavalry seem like a useless pit, and chariots only do real damage the round they charge.

Thunderfrog wrote:
Tomb King - 303 points.

Spear of Antarhak, Scorpion Armor, Dragonbane Gem, Ironcurse Icon, Chariot, Shield

Liche Priest - Casket - 280
Liche Priest - Naked - 115

6 Chariots, Full Command - 290 points.
6 Chariots, Full Command - 290 points.

Special: 440 or 495

Icon Bearer with Gamblers Armor in unit of 20 Tomb Guard with full command OR 5 Ushabti 3x2.

Tomb Scorpion - 85 points.
Tomb Scorpion - 85 points.

Warmachines: 180 points.

Catapult
Catapult

Total Roster Cost: 1998 ( TG with icon bearer ) or 1953 (Ushabti )

Despite its inherent shortcomings (read: chariots, as noted), I like the look of this list TFrog, as well as how it'd look on the table. Why the icon bearer though? I'd think a prince is a better buy, for his stats as well as another badly needed incantation (even if just for his guard). Like this:

Tomb Prince - shield, light armor = 104
20 Tomb Guard - flaming banner, std, mus = 268
(or flame banner on some chariots, I had 10 points extra and few places to use them)

^ 2000 even

- Salvage

I don't really have much to offer since I don't know TK (or really WHFB in general) tactics and tricks that well, but I do find Ragnar's discussion of keep away and denial interesting. WHFB seems to be a bit short on maneuver in terms of fast units (you don't see armies playing a Parthian ride and shoot style of combat), but Ragnar's list seems pretty well designed towards that.

Any battle reports along those lines?

Let's try this one.


Lords: 259

Tomb King – 170
-Spear of Antarhak - 35
-Scorpion Armor - 40
-Dragonbane Gem -5
-Equipment - 9

Heroes: 305

Liche Priest – 115
-Altar – 165
-Dispell Scroll - 25
-Talisman of Protection - 15

Core: 585

20 Skeletons – 160
-Musician - 5
-Standard bearer - 10
-Banner of Eternal Flame - 10

20 Skeletons – 160
-Musician - 5
-Standard bearer - 10

5 Scarab Swarms - 225


Special: 613

Scorpion -85
Scorpion - 85
Scorpion – 85

24 Tomb Guard – 288
Full Command – 30
-Mirage Standard – 40

Rare: 220

1 Catapult – 110
1 Captault – 110

Total: 1997

A quarter of the army's points can use 'It Came From Below'. The idea here is to use the catapults, archers and Altar to pull the enemy in, then use one of the four coin markers on the table to deploy the scorpions/scarabs where most opportunistic. Before then, the Tomb King in the Tomb Guard unit are the central blockers.

The only change I would make there is killing the 40 points in light armor and the 15 point scroll.

Where to spend the 55 points?

Either 45 for a ward save for your altar, 30 points on double scrolls, or some combination of protections.

Note: Your Tomb King is flammable.

Give him the dragonbane gem. It gives him a 2+ ward against wounds that will cause him multiple wounds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Boss Salvage wrote:

Thunderfrog wrote:
Tomb King - 303 points.

Spear of Antarhak, Scorpion Armor, Dragonbane Gem, Ironcurse Icon, Chariot, Shield

Liche Priest - Casket - 280
Liche Priest - Naked - 115

6 Chariots, Full Command - 290 points.
6 Chariots, Full Command - 290 points.

Special: 440 or 495

Icon Bearer with Gamblers Armor in unit of 20 Tomb Guard with full command OR 5 Ushabti 3x2.

Tomb Scorpion - 85 points.
Tomb Scorpion - 85 points.

Warmachines: 180 points.

Catapult
Catapult

Total Roster Cost: 1998 ( TG with icon bearer ) or 1953 (Ushabti )

Despite its inherent shortcomings (read: chariots, as noted), I like the look of this list TFrog, as well as how it'd look on the table. Why the icon bearer though? I'd think a prince is a better buy, for his stats as well as another badly needed incantation (even if just for his guard). Like this:

Tomb Prince - shield, light armor = 104
20 Tomb Guard - flaming banner, std, mus = 268
(or flame banner on some chariots, I had 10 points extra and few places to use them)

^ 2000 even

- Salvage

Salvage,

Looking at it, I agree.

Thunderfrog wrote:The only change I would make there is killing the 40 points in light armor and the 15 point scroll.

Where to spend the 55 points?

Either 45 for a ward save for your altar, 30 points on double scrolls, or some combination of protections.

Note: Your Tomb King is flammable.

Give him the dragonbane gem. It gives him a 2+ ward against wounds that will cause him multiple wounds.

Fixed. I decided that one of the archer groups should probably have fire attacks, just so I have something to cut off regeneration. Excellent point about the dragonbane gem, never considered it like that.

Wehrkind wrote:I don't really have much to offer since I don't know TK (or really WHFB in general) tactics and tricks that well, but I do find Ragnar's discussion of keep away and denial interesting. WHFB seems to be a bit short on maneuver in terms of fast units (you don't see armies playing a Parthian ride and shoot style of combat), but Ragnar's list seems pretty well designed towards that.

Any battle reports along those lines?[/quote]

Last edition, yes, all over the place... this edition.. no.. I scrubbed the list in a fit of rage when I read the steadfast rule. Since I see people actually making armies that don't rely on steadfast only... It may be worth bringing back...