Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I was thinking about picking up a Tomb Kings Battalion and a Liche Priest, that's the army I have chosen to go with. After having looked over the Army Book a couple of times I think this is the best way to build the Battalion. The Battalion, Liche Priest, a Casket of Souls and a Warsphinx will be everything I need to get playing good decent sized games.

So here's the list, help would be much appreciated!

UPDATED LIST!

Heroes/Lords

Liche Priest – 70 pts
Level 2 Wizard – 35 pts

Total – 105 pts

Core

Skeleton Warriors (30x) – 120 pts
Light Armour – 30 pts
Standard Bearer – 10 pts
Musician – 10 pts

Total – 180 pts

Skeleton Archers (10x) – 70 pts
Light Armour – 10 pts
Musician – 10 pts

Total – 80 pts

Skeleton Horse Archers (6x) – 84 pts

Total – 84 pts

Skeleton Chariots (3x) – 165 pts
Musician – 10 pts
Standard – 10 pts

Total – 185 pts

Special Units

Khemrian Warsphinx – 210 pts
Fiery Roar – 20 pts

Total – 230 pts

Rare

Casket of Souls – 135 pts

Total – 135 pts

Army Total – 999 pts

I could make this a 1250 point list using the Tomb King in the Warsphinx set but I want to keep to the challenge of making a decent 1000 point Tomb Kings list.

Watcha think?

It looks solid, but I think some protection may be needed for the lich priest, i'm no expert, but a ward save from a magic item would just keep him alive longer and keep your skellies from crumbling.

I often look at armies from a £££ and aesthetic perspective and this will look awesome, and works out at a good price for a starter army.

Good luck!

 stargasm wrote:
It looks solid, but I think some protection may be needed for the lich priest, i'm no expert, but a ward save from a magic item would just keep him alive longer and keep your skellies from crumbling.

I often look at armies from a £££ and aesthetic perspective and this will look awesome, and works out at a good price for a starter army.

Good luck!

Thanks for your help man!

no trouble. I foget how quite it is here compared to the 40k army lists. I'll be keeping an eye on this for feedback since i'm interesting in TK myself.

Light armour on skeletons isn't worth it. You're better off getting more bodies. Especially on archers, who you're probably using as a bunker for your wizards and thus are praying will never see combat anyways. A much better protection is just to put them 1" behind their skeleton horde so that nothing can really get proper base-contact against it.

I would drop poison off the necrosphinx as well. He's best used as an assassin, to knock out generals, BSBs, and wizards from killy units. KB is great for that, and poison is denying you potential killing blows.

Honestly though, as great as that model is I think the Necrosphinx is a pretty lacklustre unit. It has its uses, but the warsphinx is a far better use of points. Double the offensive power, better synergy with nehek magic (smiting gives it +5 attacks, compared to the necrosphinx's +1), and it comes out of special instead of rare (which is already crowded with hierotitans, caskets, and scatterpults). That offensive output is also REALLY important on the sphinxes, since it tends to be SCR that kills them.

Speaking of rare section, you REALLY need a casket. Tomb Kings are slow, and if you don't give your opponents a reason to come at you they'll happily decline. The number one reason to give them is the casket. Not only is its damage potential considerable, but it also gives you an edge in the magic phase. No reason to leave home without one.

Finally bells-and-whistles. Chariots need a musician for the mobility of free-reforms. They can USE a standard for the +1 CR to help break enemies, though they're best used as flank-chargers against something that probably already has a standard or to clear out chaff (for which 3d6 S4 should be plenty). What they definitely do NOT need is a champion, since one solitary extra S4/3 attack just plain isn't worth it. The exception is if you're bunkering Arkhan the Black or a Tomb Prince in there, but even then it's not necessary.

Horse Archers also don't need any command. Nor should they ever be larger than 5 models. They're purely a harasser/redirector unit, and as such should be kept as cheap as possible. I'd also recommend not taking them until 1,500 points or more, as you're probably not going to get 70 points of utility out of chaff in small games. A scorpion would be a better bet for your points at this, since it doubles as a warmachine hunter and mage assassin.



Otherwise your list seems solid. Keep in mind that Tomb Kings really struggle in small games, so don't it keep you down. Our units need to be big to work properly, and we can't afford that until at least 1,500 to 2,000. Personally I don't like playing below 2,500. Just treat these small games as test sessions for units going into your bigger lists and leave it at that.

ps. you'll find much better advice regarding the Tomb Kings at the Khemri forums. Come join us! New players are always welcome.

Thanks for all of your help, it's great to know as much as possible before I start fielding any lists.

Firstly, do your think taking a Necrosphinx/Warsphinx at this amount of points is even necessary? Do you think I may be better off with something else?

Your right about needing a casket.

Why I've taken the horsemen is because I'm trying to make this list pretty affordable so I want to use everything in the Battalion. I would love to get playing ASAP!

This has really made me think about the list, I think I'm definitely going to rewrite it.

Thanks again for all of your help!

New list is looking good. I still don't like those two units of skeletons, though. 10 archers isn't really enough for a bunker as it's pretty easy to chew through that many models with fast cav or ranged shooting. 30 skeleton warriors isn't enough either. At I2 WS2 they're going to get hit first and hit hard, and probably not do much damage on the way back, so you only need to do ~15 wounds to that unit for it to crumble away in a single turn. Not very hard to do.

Honestly, I'd rather see two units of 20 archers. Lots of shooting, somewhere to put your hierophant if the other is in danger, and it'll be a good backbone for later games where most people like to run 2x20 archers to clear out enemy chaff.

If you're really into skeletons though I highly recommend the Wargames Factory variety. They're waaaaay cheaper than GW skeletons ($20 for 30, and they give deals for buying in bulk) and look a lot better to boot.

Oh, and for the horse archers you should try using unit-fillers to get them up to two units of 5 for higher point games. I have a pair of 50mm bases that I used for the same. A bit of creativity and you can make it work. They don't tend to make it past a round of combat anyways so it's not really a big deal.

Thanks again, you have been really helpful with this list. I am very keen on running a block of skeleton warriors so I think I might just keep the list at what it's at now. Considering archers are 2 points more than skeleton warriors, I really can't afford to run two 20 man units of them.

Those skeletons from Wargames Factory look really nice, I would love a box. Sadly since I'm in Ireland shipping is almost twice the price as the models themselves so it won't be worth my while since I plan on building slowly. My alternative is buying through Wayland games, they have all of GW's stuff at a discount. The Battalion is only 68 euro (110 euro in Games Workshop) and there doing free shipping on orders over 40 euro at the moment so I'm going to pick that up tomorrow hopefully.

Anyway thanks again for all of your help.

Yeah I love the big unit of skeletons with prince as well; it's a really fantastic, fun, fluffy unit. Seeing the look on opponents' faces when they realize your skeletons are WS5 is pretty fun as well.

That said, in the end I had to drop the unit to make room for other things. As great as it is it suffers from lack of mobility, has a number of achilles heels (high toughness/armour), and worst of all costs you 104-154 points outside of core to make really workable and my current army just plain doesn't have room for that. I bring it back in at 3,000, but shy of that they got cut for two units of 3 chariots.

Though I just switched from Death to Light Council for my supplemental lore, which I'm anticipating is going to be a bit more static so the skeletons might see a come back. We'll see how it goes. Without a prince you need upwards of 70 for the unit to be an effective tarpit, and that's a looooot of models to paint.

Shame the WGF skeletons are so expensive on shipping. They really are worthwhile models, especially if you have the TK shields to round out the look.

I'm not so sure about the Casket of Souls at the moment. I don't quite understand how it works. A small unit of Tomb Guard or if I could some how find room for some Necropolis Knights, surely would pack a far greater punch at 1000 points rather than the Casket.

Do you think that could work?

Casket of Souls is easy peasy. Bound level 5, meaning that you need to roll a 5 on the dice to get it off and don't get a wizard level. So minimum 2 dice, basically.

If it goes off, then the enemy takes a leadership check on 3d6 and takes a wounds (no armour saves, but they do get ward saves) for every point they fail by. Note that since it's a regular leadership check they benefit from the general's Inspiring Presence, stuff like cold blooded, and the BSB's reroll. Note that the BSB's reroll is a MUST ability not a MAY ability, so even if they're happy just failling by 1 they must reroll if it exceeds their LD at all.

Once it goes off it bounces to another unit within 6", so long as there's one within 6" that hasn't been hit yet (even if the hit came from another casket).

So the spell is pretty damned awesome, and opponents will generally save a lot of dice for it. Oh, and it also generates D3 extra spell dice and is an "innate bound spell" so just plain ignores miscasts. At 135 points it's a fething steal.

As for why to take that over some knights or tomb guard? Well a couple reasons. First everything in your army is slow, so if your opponent out-ranges you they don't need to fight you unless they want to. Yeah they might not be experienced enough to know this, but trust me...they'll learn. And once they do you're fethed.

Second it helps you with magic superiority, in an army that relies on magic. Everything in our army is overcosted and underpowered, so you need magic to win fights with them since they're too slow to pick the ones they'll win. That or go with the all-chariots-and-sphinxes army, which is cool until you encounter a list full of cannons .

Finally in 1,000 points you're going to have trouble fielding knights or TG in anything resembling adequate sizes. Knights maybe, but even still....3 just plain isn't enough. They're both I3, meaning that most things will hit first. And they're both fragile, meaning that both will take losses before they get to hit. 3 knights means 1-2 will be around to strike back, which isn't going to win them combat. TG are even more fragile, so fare even worse. Even my unit of 30 is often reduced to 10 before they actually get to strike, and Nehek magic can only do so much to stem those losses.

That's why caskets are considered pretty much the only "must-have" unit in the book. They're just so helpful all around that there isn't really much reason to not take one. Even if you're running Magic-Lite you can still throw 6 dice at the thing and ram it through IF. It's just awesome all around.

Once again I can't thank you enough for all of your help! I haven't even played at all yet but thanks to you I'll have a good idea when I hopefully get a game in next week. That is if my Battalion arrives in the next few days.

Thanks again!

No worries! I hope it goes well.

As I've said before, Tomb Kings are a cruel mistress. Expect to lose game after game after game until you figure out how to get your units working for you. TK are a synergy army, whose pieces only work when they're supporting each other well. It takes a while to learn how not to feth that up.


One piece of advice I'll give you is that you really need to learn how to protect your wizard bunker. It's not the crumble losses that are the most concerning part, it's the fact that without magic support your units won't fight well and when you start crumbling you're on the clock and your opponent can just dance around you while you slowly melt away.

My favourite trick has been to put my wizards into a unit of ~20 archers with a champion 1" behind something really mean. That way fliers can't jump over them and land in front of me (they can only attack front arc if they're in front arc, and if they can't fit anywhere in base-contact then they fail-charge), and if they DO reach you it's in the flank where they can only get into base-contact with 1-2 models and can't directly attack your wizards until they've eaten through 20 skeletons (which actually takes a while to do). And if it's a demon prince or pegasus character doing the charging you can just challenge with the champion and let him sacrifice himself to protect the unit, then raise him back on your turn so he can do it again.