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This may seem like a stupid question, but in regards to skeleton archers from Tomb Kings, how large of groups should you run?

Are blocks of 15-20 solid? Or would multiple smaller groups of 10 work better?

Still not sure if I want to go magic heavy to buff the heck out of an existing army, or focus everything on maximum summoning of new units.

omerakk wrote:
This may seem like a stupid question, but in regards to skeleton archers from Tomb Kings, how large of groups should you run?

Are blocks of 15-20 solid? Or would multiple smaller groups of 10 work better?

Still not sure if I want to go magic heavy to buff the heck out of an existing army, or focus everything on maximum summoning of new units.

I like making units of 16. It's a single box. It's a fairly small foot print. It's in 100 point increments for summoning.
It also seems to be just large enough to hold against lighter units for a turn or two.

-Matt

Depends on what you want to run them for. If you have Khalida in them (basically, using them to delete a unit a turn) you want anywhere from 60 to 100. Units of 20 to 30 are decent for a little bit of damage. Units of 10 or 15 (or 16) are really only good as little mage bunkers, just there as ablative wounds for your liches that happen to be able to poke at stuff a bit.

omerakk wrote:
This may seem like a stupid question, but in regards to skeleton archers from Tomb Kings, how large of groups should you run?

Are blocks of 15-20 solid? Or would multiple smaller groups of 10 work better?

Still not sure if I want to go magic heavy to buff the heck out of an existing army, or focus everything on maximum summoning of new units.

It really depends on what you want to use them for. Generally speaking more units gives you more drops (+ in that you get more dead drops, but - in that you're less likely to go first), and your opponent will have to expend more effort killing them (or typing them up so they can't shoot). However they'll also give up their points more easily, and will cost you more in terms of command since you'll be wanting at least a musician (more units means more musicians, or more musician-less archers). More importantly, bubbled smiting is a really expensive spell while casting it on a single unit is relatively cheap.

Thus the real question you should ask yourself isn't so much "how many guys should be in a unit" as "why would I want to have more than one unit?"

However I can tell you that, from being active on the TK boards for so long, the general trend seems to be 20-30 for anything other than a minimum-size mage bunker (in which case 14 with a champ is the lowest you'll want to go). Other people will run a unit of 50+ with either Khalida, for an archer star, or a couple of tomb princes for a "multi-use block."


Keep in mind that you'll find diminishing returns from archers unless you're loading up on ways to reduce enemy T. S3 shooting isn't all its cracked up to be, unless it's against foes reduced to T1/2. And even then armour will give you nightmares.

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

Keep in mind that you'll find diminishing returns from archers unless you're loading up on ways to reduce enemy T. S3 shooting isn't all its cracked up to be, unless it's against foes reduced to T1/2. And even then armour will give you nightmares.

This is where TK diverge from UL.

Massed S3 is great against softer targets.
Banshee screams and Terrorgheists are extremely good against low wound count high toughness high armor save targets.
Combined, they are the swiss-army-knife of undead.

The TK problems of dealing with high toughness and great armor is not an issue for the Legion.

-Matt

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

Keep in mind that you'll find diminishing returns from archers unless you're loading up on ways to reduce enemy T. S3 shooting isn't all its cracked up to be, unless it's against foes reduced to T1/2. And even then armour will give you nightmares.

This is where TK diverge from UL.

Massed S3 is great against softer targets.
Banshee screams and Terrorgheists are extremely good against low wound count high toughness high armor save targets.
Combined, they are the swiss-army-knife of undead.

The TK problems of dealing with high toughness and great armor is not an issue for the Legion.

-Matt

You have to build for that though. LHP on Nehekhara, vampire lord L4 on shadow/death. Hit an unarmoured target with Desiccation, hit them with Wither/soulblight, smite your archers, pew pew pew. Use direwolves to jam them up as they come at you and shred things with your casket. Then when they hit you have a VL and other tools to eat through what's left.


...the issue is that UL lists get real tight real quick. There's such an embarrassment of riches that you really need to think carefully about what you include. This is why I think a "netlist" hasn't developed yet, since there are so many options to test out and not enough opportunities to do it in.

My problem is, I have no real background with Tomb Kings or Vampire Counts.

A friend of mine recently got rid of his Vampire Counts so I was able to pick them up dirt cheap because I loved the models. Now, I'm trying to figure out what to actually do with them

Themes I have considered but I'm not sure how to build an army around:

Graveguard Hammer with a Crypt Horror Anvil
Blacknight Bus
Ahrkan summoningfest
Monsterous creature list lead by a bunch of Warsphinx's (calling it, The Deadly Sphinxter)