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Which way do they play better so i know how to build my army

Thank you

Generally you want your skeleton warriors to be archers and leave the close combat for tombguard. 6 points for unmodifiable shooting and hand weapons to me is more appealing than a huge horde of sword and board or spearmen that will get out maneuvered due to our movement restrictions. The archers are also a nice bunker for heirophants.

I disagree. I love the horde ot WS 5/6 core troops with sword and board. If you focus on dropping S/T through soulblight and desication you'll be alright. gotta kill the big stuff before it gets to you though. 2 skullapult and a casket, and death magic helps.

I prefer archers. Better to ignore hit modifiers than have just a non-special block of melee models.

Depends on your playstyle and characters with your list. If you take the Queen Special Character, she can give your Archers bonuses to hit, as well as Poisoned Arrows, and you stick her in a big block of 50x Archers and watch them punish opponents (Seen them nearly kill off a whole Empire Knight unit of 15x w/Warrior Priest in one Volley before) so it can be worth it. However, Spearmen make a great block, as you stick a Prince or CC Character with them, they use his WS in CC, which is awesome to say the least.

However if I had to chose between them, forget Archers and Swordsmen and go with Charitos. Much cooler and much fluffier and you can get WS7 Chariots if you Include Settera in a unit of them .

Well that really depends.

Skeleton warriors are a tarpit/grinding unit. With a royal in there they can withstand a startling amount of punishment, and typically hold something up for several turns while the rest of your army goes to work. With a prince you want to be in horde formation against anything without loads of attacks (like warriors of chaos, who you'll want to face in bus).

Skeleton archers are more expensive and less durable without parry saves. However they're excellent mage bunkers in units of ~20, and are good at clearing out chaff (or killing wood elves, which are big on the scene right now).

In the end it really depends on what you want out of your core. You should always run 20 archers and 2x5 horse archers in every list, period. The first to bunker your mage(s), the latter to chaff and block vanguard. The rest is up to you.

Some people do a big horde of warriors with a prince (60 usually sufficies). Some do an even bigger horde without a prince (80-100 works). Others like doing archers instead of warriors, and putting a pair of princes in there to increase their survivability (20% of the bus is S5 that way). Others don't do either and fill their core with chariots instead (which I've done, and I'm not a fan).

Just don't expect much out of the archers. Unless you're doing a huge unit (like 50+) and shooting something that's been debuffed with desiccation + soulblight, or are using khalida, you won't do as much damage as you think. S3 shots that hit on 5+ just aren't all that. They're great for clearing chaff though.

ok I'll say it! Do both! going all one or the other rarely works well all the time.

There's truth to Canadianguy.

At 2500 points, I run..

Khalida + 50 Archers. (80ish poison shots when deployed wide enough and you get off Righteous Smiting)

Lvl 4 naked Liche Priest

6 Chariots (stabby AND shooty! Each chariot has two crewmen with a bow each.)

30-40 Tomb Guard with Halberds.

Shooty and stabby =)

The thing I've noticed about Tomb Kings, is that you can take just about anything in your army, and if you synergize, you can make it work. You can do both shooting and stabby, or focus on one or the other and do even better at it, obviously.

 krodarklorr wrote:
The thing I've noticed about Tomb Kings, is that you can take just about anything in your army, and if you synergize, you can make it work. You can do both shooting and stabby, or focus on one or the other and do even better at it, obviously.

As a tournament Tomb King player, that's pretty true.

Khalida + Archers + Catapults + Casket

TK + Tomb Guard + Chariot Flankers + Sphinx

 Thunderfrog wrote:

 krodarklorr wrote:
The thing I've noticed about Tomb Kings, is that you can take just about anything in your army, and if you synergize, you can make it work. You can do both shooting and stabby, or focus on one or the other and do even better at it, obviously.

As a tournament Tomb King player, that's pretty true.

Khalida + Archers + Catapults + Casket

TK + Tomb Guard + Chariot Flankers + Sphinx

Yeah, those seem to be the more popular ways to go with TK. And I'm actually surprised to see someone who plays them in tournaments.

The only time I ever feel gimped is when I have missions with table quarters.

Smart opponents will dispel my movement spell every time at end game to keep my non-marching butt away from them.

Your mistake is assuming one "plays" better than the other.

Both units have their Niche to fill, and are dependent on the philosophy you use to build an army.

If you want to build a shooty Khalida army, you're probably not going to have a lot of Sword and Board units.

If you want to build a "hero in every unit" army (which is actually kind of fun and surprisingly effective) Then you'll want lots of sword/board and Spear/Board skellies.

a balanced army realizes that a good sized unit of skeletons in a 2500 point army is relatively cheap and can keep a unit designed to take out your warmachines away long enough to allow the warmachines to do work.

I never go to battle without a unit or two of 30 skeleton archers, and roughly 100 skeleton warriors both of the HW/SH and Spear/Sheild variety. The rest of the army depends on what I'm feeling like for the day... chariot spam, constructs, balanced, horde (terrible), A hero in every unit...