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I'm playing against my friend this weekend, who will be fielding dwarves, and I want to run my list idea by you guys to get some suggestions.

Tomb Prince with light armor, shield and great weapon 108 points
Liche Priest 115 points

Core 2+

5 Horse Archers 70 points
5 Horse Archers 70 points

Special 0-3

3 Chariots 120 points
3 Ushabti 195 points
16 Tomb Guard with standard bearer and banner of the undying legion 229 points

Rare 0-1
Screaming Skull Catapult 90 points.

Total 997

The plan is to put the priest with the catapult and the prince with the tomb guard. I know he's only bringing a stone thrower for siege weapons, so I can have the priest give extra movement at the start of the game, and focus on double shooting and bringing back crew members in the later turns. I thought about a casket but in the end I feel like the priest catapult combo is better at 1k. I'm wondering if I should bring some tomb scorpions instead of the ushabti and chariots to make the tomb guard unit bigger or to take an item for the prince. Scorpions are 85 points each, for s5 t5 4w 4 attacks and they can essentially deep strike. I have 3 scorpions for what it's worth. It would give me something that could threaten his war machines and maybe distract him as I advance up.

Let me know if you guys have any thoughts on the list.

I'll throw my2c, for what it's worth.

From my experience, TK heavily rely on movement/magic and their infantry is meh at best.
Prince on chariot + chariot unit becomes much more threatening and useful. On foot without march is excruciating unless you can reliably cast the movement spell. Against dwarves at 1k, it's going to be hard with only 3 dice (2 priest +1 prince) against the 4 dwarf base (+ any extra antimagic).
Perhaps the magic item that gives one extra casting for the priest can be useful for that crucial moment you need a charge in the magic phase or whatever.
I think Scorpions or swarms are a good option in general, and even more against dwarves, if only to harass their back-line. Carrions are awesome for that too + more reliable (not getting stuck in the sand).
I also find the "heavy" cavalry more useful than the horse archers (who will barely do any damage). At least they are a bit more enduring and often get dismissed by the opponent, which can lead to juicy objective grabs or even a flank charges towards the end of the game.

In general, against dwarves I'd look for fast moving units to circle/outmaneuver him and get the right charges at the right time. Locked in a shooting+infantry contest is a doomed caused when comparing TK and Dwarves.

Yeah, I think you are right about the Tomb Guard. I'm gonna use the leftover points to put the prince on a chariot and give both him and the liche some items. My heavy horsemen just took a Dettol bath in the ultrasonic cleaner, so they wouldn't be ready for the game, but I do have some swarms available. With these changes, my slowest unit becomes the Ushabti with a move of 5. Would you swap them out for the second scorpion? I'll put a list together later and post it.

I always had problems with large blocks of archers. They look weak they are weak, but you can put out a lot of firepower on 5+ or have undead tarpit block capability. Useful either way.

Ushabtis can be very useful against dwarves, me thinks. Guaranteed they get the charge and wounding on 2+. Potentially can wipe a rank and probably one of the few TK units capable of head-on charging an infantry block (especially if supported with magic for the extra attack). I'd just be careful against regiments that automatically have a +5 combat resolution.

Also worth mentioning: Fear autobreak is one of the most powerful 6th ed weapons. Dwarves are hard to break with L9, but if you manage to win a combat just by 1 point and have more US, it's a landslide. Engaging in combats where you have US in favor and/or can cancel their easy points (flank to cancel ranks, etc) makes highly mobile TK (or VC for the matter) really good. You choose who and where gets to fight, hence flying/cavalry/magic combination for TK.

At 1,000 I'd personally want a larger footprint on the table, but run with it if it fits your personal playstyle

How did it go?

It got postponed, so I'm hoping to play the game next weekend. I'm hoping to have the horsemen available by then. They need a bit more cleaning and re-assembling before I can start the repaint.

My strategy would be to make the most out of the shooting phase and tweaking the list to be sure you fire the catapult twice each turn. Therefore I recommend giving either the Canopic Jar or the Plaques of Mighty Incantations to the liche priest.

I would take 20 skeleton archers with the tomb prince nearby to make them shoot twice each turn. If you roll a four or better he may be tempted to roll 2D6 to dispel My will be done.

We played the game today and it was a hard fought battle, but I pulled off a minor victory. My opponent brought a rune priest and a thane, as well as a block of 20 warriors, 10 thunderers, a cannon and 20 iron breakers.

I ended up taking the horse archers, the chariots with the mirage standard, the ushabti, the scorpion, the catapult, a priest with a jar and a prince on a chariot.

We both deployed pretty balanced. I got first turn and moved up with everything. He shut my magic down for most of the game. I also misfired on the first turn with the catapult, losing a turn of shooting and a crew member. He moved up a bit and fired his cannon at the chariots, killing 1. Turn 2 my scorpion came in but scatered badly, landing in the flank of the warriors. I got really lucky and was able to get him to use some dispel dice early, which let me use the jar on charging the chariots into the front of the warriors to support the scorpion. I killed 5 dwarves but and won combat but he managed to pass leadership. On his second turn, he chose not to charge his thunderers into the side of my scorpion, electing to shoot at the ushabti. His cannon miss fired and exploded. I used my horses to screen and stop the iron breakers from wheeling towards the combat. Turn 3 he moved his thane and priest to charge my scorpion and chariots in turn 4.I won combat again but he held again. Turn 4, I moved my horses again to get in the way of any countercharges. I lost one unit to combat. I got lucky by hitting the ironbreakers with the catapult and killing a couple, then having them roll an 11 on the panic test. They subsequently ran 11 inches away, almost going off the table. I broke the warriors and ran them down. The chariots wound up trapped in the corner and the scorpion was off the table. I was able to screen the chariots with the scorpion, who singlehandedly beat both dwarf heroes after they got the charge. We called it at that point. My best unit was easily the scorpion. The ushabti were my worst unit because I couldn’t reliably support them with magic. In the future, I would swap them with a scorpion and take some archers or maybe more horsemen.

I'd say if you're going to change anything you should put in a ranked unit or two.

I don't think I could reliably get infantry into the fight at this point level. They move too slow and if the opponent wants to avoid them they can do so easily. All my cav and chariots count as fast cav so they won't get rank bonuses, but I do see the value of having a higher unit strength for the purposes of auto breaking units due to fear plus outnumbering. If I put the priest on a horse, he would need a bigger bodyguard unit as well. I think that a big thing that I noticed is that you need to have the speed to support the scorpions when they appear.

Thanks for updating. I remembered after posting that dwarfs have 4 dispel dice to start which is rough for TK at 1000 pts. Please keep posting I am interested in how you develop your list.

Question regarding the Ushabti: are their "Huge ritual blades" considered hand weapons? They don't say anywhere that they are Great Weapons but they sure do fit the bill of what Great Weapons look like.

Yeah, I will hopefully set up a rematch soon. The Ushabti are definetly getting the axe, but I'm not quite sure what to replace them with. I'm actually thinking about adding a second priest and another scorpion in their place.

In regards to the Ushabti, I think they built the bonus into their profile, but they were intended to attack at initiative.