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Tomb Kings

9x Skeleton Archers w/banner: 5 pts
10x Skeleton Warriors w/banner: 4 pts
2x Catapults: 4 pts
1x Scorpion: 2
1x Tomb King: 3
1x Liche Priest: 2


Ogres

2x Mournfang Cav
2x Mournfang Cav
1x Skrag the Slaughterer
1x Thundertusk


Deployment.





In our area, we deploy per usual, with the only difference being each player picks just two terrain pieces to be magical. This is done before deployment and after table sides. It keeps much easier book-keeping on what piece does what. My opponent deployed heavy to one side, so I tried to stagger my forces to draw him slowly across the board.


Battle Round 1

Ogres go first.

He moves his ogres all towards my towered archers, rather than splitting up his forces. It's a bit overkill, but it should buy me more time. He casts Mystic Shield on some Mournfang Cav.

Tomb Kings go second.

Liche Priest summons and rolls a 9. With the +1 from the mystic tower, that means doubled summon! 20 more skeleton archers hit the field. Shooting removes a whole unit of Mournfang Cav. The rest of my units back up a little. The scorpion stays underground for now.



Battle Round 2

Tomb Kings go first.

Lich Priest summons 10 more skeleton archers. Tomb King gives his command ability to the 20 block of skeleton archers, but only 8 are in range for shooting. Catapults whiff. Archers do 2 wounds to the Thundertusk. Tower

Ogres go second.

Ogres try to charge the tower with the archers, but fail the 3inch charge!



Battle Round 3

Tomb Kings go first.

Lich Priest and Tomb King augment the 20 archers again, who then cannot get in range. Scorpion is still lurking. Catapults both hit, but the Thundertusk makes both 5+ saves.

Ogres go second.

Ogres charge the tower, avoid the d6 roll of doom, and sweep the 9 archers away easily.



Battle Round 4

Ogres go first.

Thundertusk takes full move + 6 inch run and can apparently still charge. Mournfang and Skrag follow after, but slower. The Thundertusk kills 20 archers in one round of combat., earning my opponent a whole 10 points in one round. Ironically, this is the same price for a single Thundertusk in Azyr Comp. It's also close enough to suck my other archers into the "3 inch zone."

Tomb Kings go second.

I summon another block of 10 archers. It feels cheezy, but I'm losing hard and with how many points undead give away for nothing in Azyr comp, it's either table the opponent or lose. Tomb King tries to charge but fails. Skeleton warriors and Archers get in melee, do two wounds, and then get mostly pasted.



Battle Round 5

Tomb Kings go first.

Tomb Priest Mystic Shields the King. King uses Inspiring Presence on Archers, who regenerate all lost wounds with banner. The warriors only return 2, putting the unit at 5. Scorpion Emerges and charges. Catapults do 4 wounds to the Mournfang. Tomb King Charges. Tomb King activates first and does 6 wounds, but the Thundertusk only takes 3. The Thundertusk retaliates by killing 3 warriors and 9 archers. The Scorpion does 2 wounds, and 1 goes through.

Ogres go second.

He kills the last 3 warriors in the shooting phase, then charges his Mournfang into the last archer. Thundertusk does 3 wounds to my Tomb King and whiffs everything else. Mournfang do the last wounds to the skeleton archers. I'm just getting rolled through now, and bleeding points as fast as I can summon them. The Tomb King manages another 2 wounds on the Thundertusk. Scorpion whiffs.



Battle Round 6

Tomb Kings go first.

Priest summons 10 more archers. Apparently, in Azyr comp, half your shots rounded up hit your own units when shooting into combat. Catapults fire just one shot, so it's shooting with impunity for them. Anyways, both hit and level the Thundertusk. Other shooting does nothing. The King and Scorpion charge the Mournfang, and kill one. It retaliates and does two wounds to the Tomb King, leaving him at one wound left.

Ogress go second.

Skrag Mystic Bolts the King out of the picture, and the Thundertusk and Scorpion dance a little, but nothing else happens.



So.. how did it end?

Well, pretty lopsided, like I feared it might be.

I earned 15 points in the game. My opponent earned 26, which is a really large margin of victory. We played it out, and a turn and a half later through constant archer summoning, I tabled the ogres, but not within the 6 turn time limit.

Azyr Comp for undead is kinda borked in it's own special way.

You either pile all your points into masses of 30+ undead and summon every turn to have a chance, or you get slaughtered I would imagine. The points for very fragile troops is too high. Sure there's bonuses to stacking them, but even then they still arent as good as Phoenix Guard or Demon troops, which cost the same. Although Undead have won "A disparate amount of games" in Azyr Comp, that's not been my experience through the myriad of Sigmar comps. I wound contend undead do well in Azyr because summoning isn't reigned in enough.

It was suggested to me by the fine folk at Azyr that my list was going to be the downfall, but honestly, there isn't much I could have taken. I could have only fielded 20 tomb guard, who aren't much better. I could have taken a 10pt Necrosphinx, but had nothing left for points. Undead should either have their prices inflate as you take more of them or Azyr should reign in summoning and lower the cost of undead across the board. Summoning is probably why these armies are winning, I can't possibly fathom how they do it on the strength of their troops in this comp. This is also a problem because your points cost take into consideration the fact you summon, so you have to summon to have the same size force. Summoning brings in more over-costed troops, meaning you have to TRIPLE DOWN on the summons to table the opponent or else, because there's no way your going to win on standard point trades. (Because you have less troops, because your summoning is factored in to your original point cost, remember?)

Tomorrow I'm thinking of taking some wood elves to play. I'm not sure how it's going to stack up against the Skaven. A brief glance at the relative costs is concerning. A ratling gun is one point for 2d6/4d6 shots. Unless I pile up 20 archers for a considerable amount of points, it seems I'm going to have an uphill battle on my hands again!

I'm not familiar with this points system, but.

Thundertusk takes full move + 6 inch run and can apparently still charge.

Care to say why, I'm not aware of what lets that charge after running?

On the face of it your complaint about losing 20 archers and 10 points was down to a rules error based on what I currently know.

It's also worth noting that the turn sequence at that crucial point went:

You - out of range.
Him - move, kill.
Him - move, kill
You.

Looking at the piccies (hard to tell exactly) the initiative could well altered things a lot.

Him - move kill tower units.
You - now in range and shoot.
You - shoot again, or run away or whatever.
Him - if still alive move etc.

No points system can handle that sort of thing. If you go first and can't get in range for shooting then you should consider what to do in case he gets the double move. It sounds and looks like (from the picture) that you set yourself possibly for the enemy to get a great double turn on you (though can't really tell the distances on the pciture).

Apparently, in Azyr comp, half your shots rounded up hit your own units when shooting into combat.

That sound to me that it has gone beyond a point/comp system. That certainly significantly weakens ranged units, not sure whether that is accounted for in the points, but given that you seemed to be largely using/summoning ranged units that might not have been a great idea.

It also appears to me that you met your worst type of matchup here. You have a lot of weak attacks, little rending or ability to do mortal wounds and up against heavily armored units. You are largely using archers against a fast heavy armor melee focused enemy, where ranged attacks have been rules to work differently than the base game. There are plenty of forces that would have struggled against that mass archer summoning - any else relying on shooting (you simply dump out more and more) or anyone with less armored units. However most missiles will not do well against melee troops if they can't whittle down the enemy before contact, so a fast heavy armor force is a major counter to mass archers. That ogre force is tough against what you took as his armor, plus possible mystic shield or cover makes it very tough to deal with. His speed makes it hard to deal with before he hits you. Had you had some heavier rending or mortal wound capability then his heavy armor would have been a lot less meaningful. Again this is something no point system can readily handle.

What to do? Increase the points of the armor units? But then had you turned up with heavy rending or mortal wound inflicting units he would have been paying more and taking less models whilst facing something his supposed armor edge didn't help with.

What to do? increase the points of the rending/mortal wound capable troops. But then you pay more for something and get less when you come up against say your force which had naff all armor and couldn't care less about the rending/mortal wounds.

And so it goes round. Neither the point system you played nor any other can readily solve this to create some uber balance. Each scenario with it own objectives will favor different units compared to others and every matchup between 2 arbitary forces will have the possibility of meeting the counter to what you had.

I've said my piece on Azyr balance elsewhere, so I'll give some advice on making a stronger list. But first I will say that rolling for initiative can break any balance system. Its silly and can win/loose games on the result of a single roll easily. At my flgs we just alternate and it works MUCH better.

Anyways, I am not sure how many points you'll need for this, but once you get it winning shouldn't be a problem.
-Settra (general)
-Liche Priest
-Liche Priest
-Khalida
-Khalida
-Catapaults and/or skeleton archers

Settra allows both Khalida's to use their command ability, adding +1 to hit to all skeletons in the shooting phase. Settra himself adds another +1 to all units within 18" making the total bonus on your archers +3. The liche priests cast righteous smiting on a catapault or archer unit (ideally getting both off but even with just one it's still pretty bad), meaning each 6 or more to hit generates 2 extra attacks.

Your unit now generates a 6+ to hit when rolling a 3 or more on the dice, each time netting them two extra attacks that in turn can generate more extra attacks. Every enemy in range of the unit dies to infinite attacks unless they have invulnerability.

You can add more liche priests to scale the list up with summoning and more righteous smiting.

I mislabeled the Thundertusk. It was a Stonehorn.


Earth-shattering Charge: If a Stonehorn is within 12" of any enemy models at the start of your charge phase, it must attempt to charge, even if it ran in the movement phase! After a tonehorn completes its charge move, pick an enemy unit within 1"; that unit suffers D6 mortal wounds.


The double-turn was bad, but the 6 inch run + successful charge into the archer block was what did me in really. I was pretty far away, 22 inches actually.

@ Ninth: I can't think of any comp that allows double special characters. We also (stubbornly) still avoid that in our area, as it just feels a bit wrong.

A single Khalida perhaps, is a thing I might try.

In that case, use the Tomb King's command ability on the unit that gets righteously smitten. Same result, ultimately.

I wondered whether you were getting confused one way or the other with the Stone horn.

Nothing has changed compared to WFB with units like that, try and set up, summon or move chaff units so that it will be forced to charge to a place you would rather it went, rather than let it charge the stuff you would rather it didn't. E.g. Some fast horsemen to get where they need to be so that the stonehorn can't move past without being forced to try and charge them and get pulled aside. Force him to split his units or get pulled along where you want them to go.

Shooting into combat halving only counts if a unit outside of combat is shooting into it.

A unit in combat shooting does not do that.

That is to account for htings like mortars blowing up over units but magically only hitting the enemy... which is absurd.

Any all shooty list is going to have a hard time against ogres because ogres can run and charge and negate the fact you can shoot. If you have no real combat units in your list, the ogres are the perfect antithesis to what you are fielding. I don't think there's a point system around that would make that eaiser, short of giving you a handicap somehow and adding in more models to offset the fact that the ogres are built to get across an entire table in 2 turns max.

Also the fact he got back to back turns when he did pretty much sealed the game. No combat staying power, plus he got to ignore most of your shooting, thats a recipe for a tabling.

I do think if you're going to go shooting that khalida will definitely help make up for that, though how much I'm not sure. I'd have to build up a tk shooting list to take against our ogre player and see how that goes.

You can also drop the healing banners to give you more points, thus more shots from another unit.

The only thing that runs and charges in his list was the Thundertusk.

I have a large tomb king army so I'm going to replay your mission this week with the same forces against one of our ogre players who will do the same. The difference is that I am going to remove the banners to get points elsewhere.

We did this twice last night. The only difference was that I removed the healing banners freeing up 2 pts and put those into horsemen.

Game 1 was probably the worst game I have ever played in a very long time. We actually called it by turn 3 because after 2 turns of shooting, i managed 1 hit with an arrow. Everything else missed. So - gross dice. Had the luck been reversed it would have been an equal result only for me instead of him.

Game 2 - very close. Came down to turn 6 I had the thundertusk down to 1 wound but couldn't close the deal. He ended up winning due to him killing a summoned unit extra so the score came out to be 18-10. Had I taken that last wound out I would have won 20-18 but he had a flash of hot dice on the saves.

Had the game gone on an extra turn I would have won.

Overall I felt that the points were reflective of what they should have been and that game is pretty standard for what most of my azyr games have been (it coming down to turn 6).