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Recently I played fellow league mate and friend Wade, and his tomb king mortuary cult. This was a casual league game but also a bit of tournament practice for an upcoming tournament. I'm playing Woodies at 2,000 points. This nearly my entire collection coming in at this point level so it's a lot of smaller units. I'm hoping with some practice this style can perform well. If you can't tell from the poisoned arrows, I get wrecked by monsters a lot.

Glade Cap on Eagle: great weapon, armor of silvered steel
Glade Cap: bow of Loren, arcane bodkins
Spellweaver: level 4 Battle Magic, Oaken Stave (fireball, pillar of fire, oaken shield, forest walker)
9 glade guard: hagbane, muso
7 glade guard: hagbane
8 deepwood scouts: hagbane, muso
2x 5 glade riders: hagbane, reserve move
10 dryads
2x 6 deepwood scouts
3 tree kin: champ
5 wild riders: champ, banner, shields
treeman
eagles



Wade has a small amount of more powerful units
Liche Priest lvl 4 on bone dragon with tally of protection
Liche Priest lvl 4 with warden splint (splg?)
Liche Priest lvl 2 with reserve banner
Nectrotect (grants poison, hatred on Ld check)
50 skeletons with spears
6 Ushabti
Casket of Souls (aka the Glitter Cauldron)
Necrosphinx (aka Dumpfex Necrotruck)



That's a lot of points in very durable units. It's going to be a tough one. This mission is diagonal deployment. The bonus objective is +1 tournament point per unit in your enemies deployment zone at the end of the game, and another point if there are none in your own. We both deploy fairly evenly across the line. Woodies deploy a bit further back, with units that can in theory deal with monsters on the right flank across from them. Small scout units deploy behind the TK lines to harass characters and casket with poisoned shots. I deployed the eagle captain up to mulch the casket turn 1 or flee if I don’t go first. Tomb Kings win the roll off and decide to go first (winner chooses in this tournament).



Tomb Kings Turn 1

The skeletons vanguard, move, and reserve move. The level 4 on foot follows behind. Ushabti move up slights and the monsters fly to the left, setting up long charges on turn 2. Some magic goes off, but the Level 4 spellweaver with Oaken stave blocks most of it. The ushabti kill the eagle captain with their Multiple Wound (2) bows. Nasty!



Wood Elves Turn 1

Deepwood scouts move back slightly and form a unit with the spellweaver. Wild Riders move left to set up for future charges. Glade riders skirt around the left and right flanks. Treeman moves up to take a charge from the sphinx. The dryads move up to threaten the casket, and the treekin block the skeleton horde. All that hagbane does a wound to the priest of foot and a wound to the sphinx, and kills one ushabti. Ushab?





Tomb Kings Turn 2

Dragon charges the dryads. Skellie bus charges the tree kin. Necrosphinx charges the treemen. The tree spirits are all stuck in. It’s a bit early but there’s not much I can do to stop flying swiftstride monsters.The dryad play was a little aggressive. In retrospect I should have just moved everything backward instead of trying to get favorable charges and bought myself some time. Tomb scorpions arrive, one by each liche priest. All the wounds I did from shooting are negated except the single ushab. In combat, The sphinx does 3 wounds to the treeman and the tree does 2 back. The dragon kills three dryads. The treekin lose one tree but murder the priest with BSB. Way to stem the tide, guys! All tree spirits blow Stubborn to auto fall back and not risk fleeing for real. Skeleton don’t reach but the monsters pursue successfully.





Wood Elves Turn 2

Wood Elves desperately try to maneuver to make something happen. Glade guard move to prepare for either a dragon or sphinx charge. Glade guard reverse off the hill (they’re actually a bit further up but wouldn’t balance.) Wood elf magic and shooting takes out one tomb scorpion but not much else. Pillar of Fire goes off and will kill 1 skeleton and do nothing to the liche priest it also travels through at the top of turn 3. The eagle and riders continue to outflank, hoping to score the bonus point and maybe get a nice charge off on the casket. Combat sees the treeman fall without getting to fight back. The dryads flee with a single nymph and the dragon reforms. The sphinx charges the side of the wild riders, who cannot counter charge due to glade guard being in the way.



Tomb Kings Turn 3

The sphinx flank charges the wild riders. The dragon flies up to sling spells. The skellie hoard charges the tree kin. The sphinx stomps the wild riders to death and overruns into the archers. The skeletons take somes wounds off the tree and win combat thanks to static combat res. Glade riders panic from Ushabti shooting and flee a might 16”.



Wood Elves Turn 3

The eagles charges and tips over the glitter cauldron. Hagbane arrows do nothing, continuing that trend. Dryads and wild riders (left) flee off the board. Treekin holds the skeleton hoard back.



Tomb Kings Turn 4

We roll some dice here but transition into talking through the rest of the game. The Tomb Kings take it home 18-2, and after secondary objectives the score is 22-5. A crushing blow to the Asrai but good fun had by all!



Aftermath

Despite the bigger board size, it’s a lot harder to maneuver well at 2K. This is also due to being crowded into a corner because of triangular deployment. I misjudged the tree spirits ability to take a charge from some of these units. The struggle continues on how to make Wood Elves actually function. Monsters are a big issue, and my only answers are poison arrows (very unreliable) and T3 cavalry with frenzy (unreliable and tricky to get into good combats). I tried to have them cover the middle board, but I think they would have been better strongly committed to a single flank. The general plan is to out-deploy and get more of my army on an opponent's flank, shooting them up and delivering the killing blow with cav while the trees hold the line/center. This struggles against multiple flying monsters because they can pick their fights, or just fly over.

Independent of list strength and matchup, Wade played a great game and definitely earned the win. His mortuary cult list has a lot of synergy and was a lot of fun to play against. And as for the wood elves? Well after fleeing the battlefield I'm going to go spend three days in the wilderness in true Asrai fashion to prepare for the tournament next weekend. Thanks for reading!