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Hi all,

I'm looking for some advice on constructing an Undead Legions army. Now that I can add Vampires in with my Tomb Kings, I'm completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of synergy and combinations I can field.

I love Krell's model; even if running him might not be the best option. I liked the idea of him leading a group of graveguard midfield, but it just seems like the amount of support units needed really takes away from other options like multiple monsters and such.

Can anyone offer some tips on how to build a list centered around an elite infantry block like this? Or should I just be scrapping the idea in favor of the usual mass summoning force?

For a person who participating in tournaments actively. Do not buy Nagash. He is severely banned and even some of the monarchs are banned. Check your local gaming group and see if they will allow it, but I know here that if you bring Nagash... nobody is going to play with you.

Take you vampire counts army, and add a casket. Replace half your normal core with skeletons with bows.
Most of the vampire count units are better.

If you want an infantry death star, go with Vlad, and a support vampire with aura of dark majesty and fear incarnate. Give grave guard screaming banner.

Opponent will be taking fear tests on 3 dice (dropping lowest) without the BSB re-rolls, and at a -2 to Ld.
Vlad also gives the unit -1 to be hit (combat and shooting).

More often than not, your opponent ends up WS1 (hitting on 6's due to Vlad) and takes a beating from the S6 killing blow great weapon attacks.

Because Vlad causes terror, you're still forcing fear tests on fear causing opponents, like ogres.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
Take you vampire counts army, and add a casket. Replace half your normal core with skeletons with bows.
Most of the vampire count units are better.

If you want an infantry death star, go with Vlad, and a support vampire with aura of dark majesty and fear incarnate. Give grave guard screaming banner.

Opponent will be taking fear tests on 3 dice (dropping lowest) without the BSB re-rolls, and at a -2 to Ld.
Vlad also gives the unit -1 to be hit (combat and shooting).

More often than not, your opponent ends up WS1 (hitting on 6's due to Vlad) and takes a beating from the S6 killing blow great weapon attacks.

Because Vlad causes terror, you're still forcing fear tests on fear causing opponents, like ogres.

As I discovered to my regret this weekend. So now the Wailing banner or other sources of ITP/terror are going to be fixtures in my lists.

The fear bomb, and super fear bomb is kind of sub-par IMO.
If you take the old scream list, and add a casket and skeleton bowmen, you have a much stronger army, that isn't dependent on your opponents army to be vulnerable to fear effects.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's my combined arms scream list.
Vampire Lord, level 4, Skabscrath, opal amulet, flight and +1 wound, heavy armor and shield.
Ghoul King, dragon bane gem, terrorgheist.
2 Banshees
3x16 skeleton bowmen
2x20 zombies with standards and musicians
2x5 dire wolves
2x5 skeleton horsemen
2 fellbats
2x1 spirit hosts
2 screaming skull catapults
1 casket of souls
1 terrorgheist

I use chaff and zombies to block and slow the opponent, and then start screaming. 2 banshee screams 2 terrorgheists and the vamp lord with 4 wounds doing his scream.
Supporting this is the 58 bow shots, 2 catapults, and the fairly under-rated and impressive direct damage from the lore of vampire.

Enemy chaff seems to vanish to this list, and the 3 flying screamers can murder death stars once the warmachines have been done in.

What you do with UL really depends on the sort of build you want to go with. There really is an embarassment of riches when it comes to the builds you can do.

For instance a BK bus does well when run with core horsemen instead of special black knights, and the savings can effectively buy you a second vampire lord to go into the unit.

TK-style builds go really well with Lore of Vampires, which can increase your grinding potential through better raising and buffs that synergize really well with the list.

Each army has a number of LD bomb tools, which can be combined to create something pretty savage. Golden Death Mask in a fear-bomb unit is nasty against anything that isn't ItP, and can be combined with screams/casket as well. Rather gimmicky IMHO, though.

Sphinxes and LoV go extremely well together as well. Their biggest weakness used to be chipping wounds off them, but with LoV it's really easy to put them back on.

UL monster mash is pretty fun.
Construct, BSB, and Morghasts will reduce crumble by 3.
All together it can make for a very effective grab and grind list.

If you can get a desert wind off on turn 1, it's pretty easy to have your entire army point blank on the enemy, with the match ups your want.

About the cav bus; locally a guy is building a lost crusade army. It's an Undead Legion all built from Brettonian parts. With archers and men at arms filling out the core, and two red fury vampires, each with their own black knight bus, 2 trebucets, and a casket (using the centerpiece of the grail req) Very pretty on the table, and extremely effective. Very intuitive to figure out what everything counts as.

Thanks for the help guys! Lots of great info!

One quick question regarding grave guard for those of you that run them; would you go with a standard ranks of 5? Or would running in ranks of 6+ for extra attacks be a better choice even though it would be more expensive?

omerakk wrote:
Thanks for the help guys! Lots of great info!

One quick question regarding grave guard for those of you that run them; would you go with a standard ranks of 5? Or would running in ranks of 6+ for extra attacks be a better choice even though it would be more expensive?

When I run grave guard, it's 7 wide, with either the tomb prince or tomb king in the unit. The extra weapon skill means I get hit less often, so they survive a bit better.

-Matt

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

omerakk wrote:
Thanks for the help guys! Lots of great info!

One quick question regarding grave guard for those of you that run them; would you go with a standard ranks of 5? Or would running in ranks of 6+ for extra attacks be a better choice even though it would be more expensive?

When I run grave guard, it's 7 wide, with either the tomb prince or tomb king in the unit. The extra weapon skill means I get hit less often, so they survive a bit better.

-Matt

I second using them 7-wide. The achilles heel of Grave Guard is that they're fragile and ASL, so tend to hemorrhage bodies before they get to strike. The wider your frontage is the more hitty units the enemy can fit in there, which exacerbates the issue. You get hit hard before you strike the first turn, but are crippled by it the second.

7-wide is the right balance between offense and defense. You get 15 attacks along the front with a champion (or 17 with a WK/TP). Less than a horde the first turn (probably), but the same or more the second turn, and they're more likely to survive for longer. Also makes the unit quite a bit cheaper.

Another good addition is a Wight King with the Nightshroud. Taking away S bonuses is a big deal, since that something like Bret/HE knights are wounding you on 5s instead of 3s (or 4s instead of 2s) in base with the WK, and will struggle to hit the WK himself. Further it makes anything not ASL hit at the same time as your GG, while ASF units lose their rerolls. Put a Vampire in there next to him and it's even nastier.

Having run the unit a few times, I would happily take 30 GG with a WK 7-wide over 40 GG without in horde. It's a much more durable and flexible unit. Also smaller, which is important with march bubble real estate being in such short supply.

Thanks for the help guys; fantastic information so far.

Any advice on the new Morghasts? I haven't even seen them in action.

omerakk wrote:
Thanks for the help guys; fantastic information so far.

Any advice on the new Morghasts? I haven't even seen them in action.

The special choice seems better. 4 S5 attacks is better than 3 S6. T5 with 4 wounds is pretty durable. They aren't a hit you in the face type of unit, they are a support with the bubble of -1 to crumble, and support the flank. They aren't vampires, constructs or large targets, so they bounce back really quickly from invocation.
I watched 3 Morghasts take on 6 kroxigor. Fight ended with 2 kroxigor alive. If the lizardmen hadn't gotten lucky shutting down the magic phase, invocation would have shifted the battle in favor of the morghasts.
Units of 2 or 3 seem to work well enough; and I'm curious if a bigger block would work (like 5 or 6), kind of like what crypt horrors do.

After seeing the models built, you pretty much need to pose them standing on something. The normal sculpt is far too spindly, and will break sooner or later.

-Matt

I see, they seem like a very solid support unit then.

Do you think they would work well in conjunction with crypt horrors then? Or do you see no real benefit in running them together?

I have been running Morghasts Arachi in groups of 6. They hit like a truck and don't take that much damage, their extra pip of armor save does help a lot. I have been running a lvl 4 Nehek to spread buffs around, and all the TK buffs really make these guys super killy.

 Acardia wrote:
I have been running Morghasts Arachi in groups of 6. They hit like a truck and don't take that much damage, their extra pip of armor save does help a lot. I have been running a lvl 4 Nehek to spread buffs around, and all the TK buffs really make these guys super killy.

Six? That's 540 points.
Or about 14 crypt horrors. I think I'd rather spend just a little more and run a horde of crypt horrors.

-Matt

yup 6. We play a lot of 3k games locally, so plenty of room for them and the obligatory casket. I also love to summon those in my NAgash lists. I do like the horrors as well, they are a bit less killy but I find them almost as durable as the Morgasts...

I'm considering a unit of 2 or 4 archai, either way run 2 deep. 6 S6 KB attacks with 50mm frontage or 12 S6 attacks for 100mm of frontage. Not shabby...not shabby at all. Better yet they'd be great support for my vargheists, since at T5 4+ they should be able to go into units in the front.

Not sure if they're worth trading out a VL for though.

Let's go in yet another direction and talk Hexwraiths.

Would you consider a unit of 5 wide the optimum size to take advantage of their passover attack?
And what type of list do you think Hexwraiths help benefit the most?

omerakk wrote:
Let's go in yet another direction and talk Hexwraiths.

Would you consider a unit of 5 wide the optimum size to take advantage of their passover attack?
And what type of list do you think Hexwraiths help benefit the most?

If you want hex wraiths, you want them with a liche high priest. You've got a lot more spells that heal them, and a vanguard, followed by a march, followed by a magical march could really do some damage.
With all the cool toys that undead get now, I'd rather have 2 units of 5 than 1 unit of 10.
In the past I had a lot of luck with the 10 man block, but I think magical attacks are just too common now, and multiple units is the future.
Besides, with 2 units, both units can heal back at the same time; and lore of nehek is pretty good on hexwraiths.

-Matt

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

omerakk wrote:
Let's go in yet another direction and talk Hexwraiths.

Would you consider a unit of 5 wide the optimum size to take advantage of their passover attack?
And what type of list do you think Hexwraiths help benefit the most?

If you want hex wraiths, you want them with a liche high priest. You've got a lot more spells that heal them, and a vanguard, followed by a march, followed by a magical march could really do some damage.
With all the cool toys that undead get now, I'd rather have 2 units of 5 than 1 unit of 10.
In the past I had a lot of luck with the 10 man block, but I think magical attacks are just too common now, and multiple units is the future.
Besides, with 2 units, both units can heal back at the same time; and lore of nehek is pretty good on hexwraiths.

-Matt

The trouble with a 10-man unit is that it's not all that harder to kill than a 5-man unit if your opponent has the answers, yet costs twice as much. WE shooting, banishment, or any decent magic missile spell will cripple them severely if not kill them outright in a single phase. And then you're down 300 points. If you do run this then Scroll of Shielding becomes an auto-include.

Two 5-man units are good harassment, and it'll split your opponent's fire. They're also cheaper so you can expend them more readily.

Really though...I'm not a fan of hex wraiths save for threat-saturation purposes. They're too rock-paper-scissors, and there are too many rocks out there to their scissors. I keep mine solely for Lore of Undeath raising. A 5-pack is amazing when they're free.

I see.

There are just so many options now that the undead armies are combined; I'm not sure which direction I want to go when I love so many different units!

I'm in pretty much the same boat, there's so much good stuff to choose from! And whilst I don't want to just pick and choose the best TK units, I don't want to end up with a TK army on the side.

I'm thinking of, like Matt says, replacing most of my Core with Horse Archers/Archers/Chariots, adding in a Casket (because Casket) and also a Tomb Scorpion because it's a great chaff unit and war machine hunter (and because I have one randomly lying around).

I would like to include some of the cool special characters, Khalida + Archer horde for example, as well as some of the sepulchral stalkers. Not enough room though...

I initially rounded in a bunch of TK units, but now I basically have a VC army with TK core and a casket.

I'm trying to squeeze a warsphinx in, though. He's loads of fun with lore of vampires. Problem is that a terrorgheist is a better buy against all the things my list is actually afraid of. Who cares about being able to mulch T3 infantry?

Where the TK units REALLY come into play though is with Lore of Undeath. Stalkers, TK skeleton warriors, hierotitans, chariots...all stuff I'd be willing to raise up with the lore. You can get a hierotitan without any extra lore counters. Stalkers I think cost two tokens? A warsphinx costs three. Given that these units are sort of situational, having the ability to raise them when you need them is an awesome advantage.

Because know what's better than tying something up with a warsphinx? Tying them up with a FREE warsphinx

Haha fair enough; free stuff definitely kicks ass

I'm really loving the look of hexwraiths starting on the board; even if that isn't nearly as good as free summoned ones.
I'd like to toss in some nice converted crypt horrors, maybe some vargeists... tie the whole thing together with a casket, archers, maybe a terrorgeist and/or sphinx.

I really wanted to add in Morghasts, but I'm not really sure where they would fit in to my army unless it was monster/construct oriented.

omerakk wrote:
Haha fair enough; free stuff definitely kicks ass

I'm really loving the look of hexwraiths starting on the board; even if that isn't nearly as good as free summoned ones.
I'd like to toss in some nice converted crypt horrors, maybe some vargeists... tie the whole thing together with a casket, archers, maybe a terrorgeist and/or sphinx.

I really wanted to add in Morghasts, but I'm not really sure where they would fit in to my army unless it was monster/construct oriented.

Hexxies are cool, they're just really fragile and rock-paper-scissorsy. In an elf-dominant meta there's too many magic missiles for them to be effective. That's why I prefer to just raise them.

Crypt horrors vs. vargheists is a build decision. I prefer vargheists (there's a thread in the tactics section where I elaborated on why). Use CH if you want more of a point-denial build that grinds out the enemy, or vargheists if you're going for more of an MSU build with lots of mobile hammers. Or just take a unit of one or the other if you need warmachine hunters (vargheist) or an anvil (crypt horrors).

As for Morghasts, they seem cool to me too. Kind of halfway between CH and vargheists. Lower attack volume than vargs, but more durable. More maneuverable than CH, but less so than vargs. Can be raised back quickly (not vampiric so WL+1 per invocation). Also have S6KB, which is good for cracking armour. The Archai are the ones you want...the others are just worse vargheists.

I actually like summoning Vargheists more. The speed lets you off set the very short summon range (unit completely within 12"), and creating a 146 point unit nicely fits into the 150 point cap.
Best of all, it's a signature spell, so you know you're going to have it.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
I actually like summoning Vargheists more. The speed lets you off set the very short summon range (unit completely within 12"), and creating a 146 point unit nicely fits into the 150 point cap.
Best of all, it's a signature spell, so you know you're going to have it.

Very different role, though.

Summoned vargheists are a suicide missile that just crashes into the enemy's face and kills a bunch before it goes down. Purchased vargheists are a flanking unit that eats the enemy's back field before swooping in to assist. You can't do that with summoned vargheists because the range won't let you raise where they're hitting things in the flank until late game, where you'd probably rather be casting buff or healing spells while everything is locked up in CC.

Vargs are still a great target for summoning, though, regardless. If a bit expensive.

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
I actually like summoning Vargheists more. The speed lets you off set the very short summon range (unit completely within 12"), and creating a 146 point unit nicely fits into the 150 point cap.
Best of all, it's a signature spell, so you know you're going to have it.

Very different role, though.

Summoned vargheists are a suicide missile that just crashes into the enemy's face and kills a bunch before it goes down. Purchased vargheists are a flanking unit that eats the enemy's back field before swooping in to assist. You can't do that with summoned vargheists because the range won't let you raise where they're hitting things in the flank until late game, where you'd probably rather be casting buff or healing spells while everything is locked up in CC.

Vargs are still a great target for summoning, though, regardless. If a bit expensive.

Mount your wizards. Turn one, you're 14 to 16 inches forward, summoning another 12". It's more mobility than the 20" fly.

-Matt

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
I actually like summoning Vargheists more. The speed lets you off set the very short summon range (unit completely within 12"), and creating a 146 point unit nicely fits into the 150 point cap.
Best of all, it's a signature spell, so you know you're going to have it.

Very different role, though.

Summoned vargheists are a suicide missile that just crashes into the enemy's face and kills a bunch before it goes down. Purchased vargheists are a flanking unit that eats the enemy's back field before swooping in to assist. You can't do that with summoned vargheists because the range won't let you raise where they're hitting things in the flank until late game, where you'd probably rather be casting buff or healing spells while everything is locked up in CC.

Vargs are still a great target for summoning, though, regardless. If a bit expensive.

Mount your wizards. Turn one, you're 14 to 16 inches forward, summoning another 12". It's more mobility than the 20" fly.

-Matt

You can get them a bit further up the board, but that's not the same as mobility. You're still restricted to a 12" bubble around your undeath caster.

The key to deployed vargheists is that they're an outflanking force. They're your last deployment, in an army that has the tools to outdeploy every opponent (save maybe Lizardmen with all those damned skinks), and get to land in a position where they're hitting your opponent at unexpected and hard to defend angles. You can't do that when they're turtling up to take a charge from your primary caster (who is either also your hitty-ass vampire lord or very close by to be marching that fast).

As I said, it's not that they aren't good, it's that they perform different roles. I bought another box specifically so that I could run my 8 and raise up another 3 more (that or just run 12, since I think they're massively undercomped in Swedish).

I run a level 2 up the flank with either skeleton horsemen (10) or black knights (6). Charges and over-runs are blocked by dire wolves and fell bats.

I find with lore of undeath I summon 4 things.
16 skeleton archers (under 100 points)
3 Vargheists (under 150)
2 Morghasts (160)
5 Hex Wraiths (150)

While I've got enough models to summon pretty much anything, these seem to be what I keep going back to.
If opponents shooting isn't a huge threat, I'll split off the necromancer and slip between units summoning into my opponents backfield.

As for near the general... I'm a sneaky bastard. I've been running a wight king as the general. T5, W3 and dirt cheap. With 1+/4++ he's nearly as survivable as a vampire, at a fraction of the cost.