looking to get back into fantasy

[darkeldarman]

So i just figured out some mates from my school play fantasy, and with a 7th ed. TK army fully painted gathering dust i thought i would get back into it for the hell of it.

What i have are:

2 screaming skull catapults

1 tomb scorpion

1 standard bearer

1 tomb king on foot

1 tomb king on a chariot

1 khalida(sp) chick

1 lich priest on foot

1 lich priest on a horse

8 heavy horsemen

8 archer horsemen

8 chariots(full command)

1 bone giant

1 soul casket

4 beetle swarms

16 archers(full command)

16 spearmen(full comand)

17 tomb guard(full command)

4 ushabti(sp)

Now what i need to know is what are competative in 8th ed., since i've been away from the game since 7th ed., and what i need to look over. I'll be getting the army book soon but what do i need to buy and how can i use these minis right now to build a semi-decent army? Thanks

[Rootmars]

I would honestly get rid of the Archers, total waste of points as they are never going to make much of impact due to their terrible BS. And maybe rethink the casket of souls.

[woodster17]

I'd drop the .... Tomb Kings. Ushabti are massively ineffective in 8th. I don't see many Tomb King armies, but the ones I have played against don't use Ushabti. Have you got the 8th edition army book/seen the new models? May be worth picking up a few of the newer constructs.

[darkeldarman]

How are dark elves?

[woodster17]

Nasty. Very nasty. One of the top 3 armies in my and most peoples eyes. If you're looking to be competitive it's an absolute no brainer to choose DE over TK.

[darkeldarman]

Only problem is that i have a fully painted army of TKs, and only a battalion of DE. I guess I'll just have to see how much i wanna get into fantasy.

[Rootmars]

you could sell you TK's and use the money to buy more DE, though i cannot help you with your time constraints.

[Snowflake]

I would honestly get rid of the Archers, total waste of points as they are never going to make much of impact due to their terrible BS. And maybe rethink the casket of souls.

Sorry, have you ever even seen TK? The casket is as close to a universally agreed upon must-take as Tomb Kings have. As for archers, yes BS2, but they always, always, always hit on 5's, which means they are better at picking off skirmishers or things in buildings than anyone else's archers are. As for shooting at normal stuff, everyone else's shooters normally hits on a 5 at long range anyway. Now, if you want to argue that Strength 3 shots aren't that great, then you may have a point there. They're mostly for picking off skirmishers and light flankers.

Anyway, for the OP, my recommendation is never field warriors, fill your core with Chariots and at least one archer bunker for your heirophant. Make sure you run a prince or King with each chariot unit. For specials, a block of Tomb Guard is a good thing, though you will need more than the 17 you have. Other good special choices are Warsphinx and Necropolis Knights. For the rares, the Casket is almost an autoinclude, and the catapults are nice, but not nearly as good as they used to be. Necrosphinx is ok, but it's single HKB attack doesn't make it a good monster hunter. Really the only things it does that the Warsphinx doesn't are fly and cost more.

The unfortunate thing you will find is that the undead rule is very bad for non-elite troops, which is why skeleton warriors are garbage nowadays. Even with WS5 or 6 from the prince/king, they do little other than die in droves. But since Chariots are no longer the light chariots they used to be, hitting someone with even 3 or 4 is really going to hurt, so they make great core filler.

[darkeldarman]

Thanks so much, but. I have one last question, how many more tomb guard would i need to be effective?

[Snowflake]

The most common way people use them is horde formation, meaning you would need at least 30, probably more. You can use them in smaller numbers, but they don't really shine until you put a prince or king with them for the WS, and a Necrotect for Hatred (Ramhotep is also commonly used, though he's even squishier than a vanilla necro). I'd say probably 35 or so, put the Necrotect on the corner. The real question is whether to give them Halberds or not. Some do, some don't. I wouldn't, 2 points is a bit much, and they already do enough damage.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, a BSB is a waste of points for us. The BSB ability is pretty useless for us, unlike living armies. There's no more magic charging, so you can't pop Hidden Dead then force a rear charge. Really he's just an expensive +1 CR that's easy to kill.

[thesheriff]

Don't sell your tomb kings. They can work. Anything can work, especially in a friendly setting.

You have Khalida. And you already have some archers. So, id pick up some more archers. An extra box will give you 32. With some unit fillers, 40 will be a good unit with Khalida.

Some more Tomb Guard would be good to. Again, a horde of 30-40 Strong with halberds preferably is very good. With a Necrotect, or the special chatecter version, and a prince, it becomes a real tank......

A Lv.4 Liche High Priest is always good.

Chariots, units of 6, are decent.

Casket and Screaming Skull Catapults are always good choices.

I really like bone giants. They churn out some good damage with AHW.

The only thing in that list that I would say is absolutely awful in that list is Unshabti. Losing the immense strength just makes them infuriate to the new Necroplis knights. Oh well, they make good unit fillers still....

thesheriff

[Skywave]

Sound advice by Snowflake. If I can add to it, here's my though on your current army.

For core, you got a good amount of Chariot, you can field them ranging from 3 to 8 so you definitly have enough for a big unit or 2 smaller ones. Bigger units benefit greatly from a King or Prince so try to include you King on Chariot with them (can field him as a King or Prince, depending on how much you want to invest on him).

For Skeletons, I would forget the Spearmen, Skeleton Warriors are not really a good investmen nowaday, and would focus on Archer instead. Skeleton Archers can be anywhere from 10 to 30+ if you feel like it, but I try to hit ~20 models most of the time to have them do somehing meaningfull.

The Horse Archer are quite decent for war machine hunter, and one of our most manoeuvrable unit. I've seen them used in various nmber, from 5 to 10 per units. Using all 8 isn't bad (ranked 4x2), but don't be afraid to cut them to 5 to save points. The Horsemen with spear are less usefull and most of the time best left at home.

For special, Swarms and Scorpion have now fallen from grace (Swarm moved to special), thanks to the change to IcfB, now EbtS (It Came From Below / Entombed Beneath The Sands). You can no longer charge when comming up, so you'll have your Swarms or Scorpion sitting there for a turn doing nothing, giving a chance to you opponent to react.

For the Tomb Guards, I like them in unit of 21+, as I prefer to rank them 6 or 7 wide. So I use either 21, 24 or 28 in my units. It give them a bit more punch without commiting to a full horde, for wich you need 30+ models and will cost a lot of points. Also, similar to the Chariot, they'll benefit a lot from a King or Prince, so alway try to get one with them.

Ushabti are not as good as they should be now, high point cost, no survivability, can't heal them (1 wound per magic phase is not what I'd call healing). Some people had some success with bigger units, like 8-9 of them, but with a smaller units I think it's not really worth it.

Catapult are still good, but suffer like any other stone throwers in that they now allow armor saves. They are best at targetting monsters or other large targets rather than massed ranks of troops.

The Casket like it was said is very good, you can't really go wrong with it.

The Bone Giant is ok but not great. He lost his armor so his survivability went down the drain, but he can still do some damage here and there with the right matchup.

For the new units you might want to consider if you want to expand, the Warsphinx and the Necropolis Knights are probably the best one we got. Both unit are quite though (going by other TK unit standard) and can dish out some pain too. They would be the first I would consider to add to you curent rooster, starting with a Sphinx or two

[Snowflake]

Another thing I forgot to mention is a note on the Casket. It's worth taking solely for the D3 power dice, even if the Light never goes off. However, you should make sure you plan your magic phase out very carefully. Look at what your opponent fears the most, and save that for last. This will generally be the Casket, since it can easily thrash monsters or war machine groups that are outside the general/BSB bubble. If he's got his whole army in the bubble, he won't care as much, but that usually doesn't happen.

Now, I've seen way too many people take that info an try to 6 dice the casket as the first thing they do. That's a bad idea. You'll either roll low enough for him to stop you, usually with fewer dice than you used since he'll get +4 to dispel and you don't, or you'll IF, which is nice, but means you won't get anything else off at all. Start with your other spells. Smiting and Killing Blow are nice, but not nice enough that he'll want to spend dice to stop them, meaning you can almost always get them off, and you're pretty safe 2-dicing them. Desiccation will win you fights if that goes off, and he will try to stop that from happening. That can easily draw out enough dice to force through the casket, or he'll go risky with it and miss. Save the casket for last. It keeps that threat hanging over his head, making him really think hard about whether he wants to stop each of your other spells.