New Empire book, why so few magic items?

[Spiney Norman]

I would actually have said that the Tomb Kings got one of the best magic item selections of any of the 8th ed armies. Only VC might be superior.

- Destroyer of Eternities is useable. I see it crop up in tournament lists from time to time. It doesn't eat your entire allowance, leaving enough points left over for a King to buy the necessary Dragonbane plus maybe an enchanted shield and a potion of speed, the King is pretty nasty. It is hands down the best of the 8th edition magic weapons anyway (and the only 8th ed book magic weapon I see being used).

- Blade of Antarhak is a solid magic weapon, particularly since the TK can't heal characters

- Golden Death Mask is amazing. Phenomenal item, and only the TK's own limitations make this less than the most broken item ever. Can you imagine if WoC or Ogres could take this item?

- Cloak of the Dunes. Again, a great item (especially compared with a flying carpet) and only the TK's own limitations bring it down. (Although to be fair, the Armour of Meteoric Iron only seems naff in the Empire list because Empire have wide access to good armour saves).

- Neferra's Scrolls - superb. A pre-nerf powerscroll, yummy.

- Kanopi. In principle it's a fine item, except that 8th edition has resulted in a real reduction in the number of RiP spells out there. I remember this was horrific with the old ogre rules. Still, you can sometimes catch your opponent out with these (e.g. purple sun or skullstorm templates still out on the table).

- Standard of the Undying Legion - Alright and I see it used from time to time

- Banner of the Hidden Dead - this did seem quite naff. Did the errata change to the points cap encourage anyone to entomb chariots?

Overall, I make that 2 really superb items, 2 solid weapons, 2 solid weapons, 1 great item that just doesn't work for TK and one crap banner. That's better than anyone else except maybe VC.

I'm still at a loss why anyone thinks the destroyer is any good, heroic killing blow just isn't worth that many points on a character with only 4 attacks, and the alternate hit mode was dubious when you got two auto hits vs everyone in B2B, it's now next to worthless. Anything that is worth taking HKB against is going to mince the King first round anyway.

The blade of Antarhak is ok ish, the mighty scroll is good, but highly limited by the army. They're only worth taking on a L4 because the chance of IFing with a L2 is only 1/36, and I would want to risk a miscast on my hiero for the sake of getting any of the LoN spells off IF, so realistically you need a second L4 with either light or death before the scroll becomes viable.

I've used Enkil's canopi for a while, but never saw a RiP spell so dropped it

The deathmask is the best of the bunch, but it is priced fairly and as you observed, limited by the army.

The cloak of dunes really isn't all that when you're unable to march, I'm interested to find out who you'd give it to as there doesn't seem to me to be much of a decent character build to put it on.

The undying banner is good, but suffers from being a bound spell, especially as the casket has a much more powerful bound spell that you want to cast every turn. Good for a tomb guard unit, but not much else, would be amazing if you could get it into a construct unit, but neither ushabs or necro knights can take magic banners and your BSB can't ride a serpent.

Hidden dead=useless

I think the other books do have useful items, I probably see O&G more favourably than you do by the sounds of it, I've run the last battle axe a few times on a savage Orc warboss and it turns him into a complete whirlwind of destruction, the stunty axe is fairly widely used as well. The star item of course is the shrunken head and the list is only really let down by its extensive collection of crap BSB only banners.

Empire looks to have the best MI list to date, the only item I don't see use for is the ring of Volans, even the AoMI is good for a WP/AL on foot and is underpriced compared to the equivalent common items. The griffon banner is yet another missed opportunity to allow a GS unit standard bearer to carry it, really don't get why they're so opposed to this. The problem is that in order to get your BSB decent protection without any magic items he needs to be on a bearded warhorse, which requires a very large unit of knights (4 ranks) to make proper use of it, I would add that while I've read some army lists on line of people fielding large units of knights, Ive never actually seen one in practice.

[The bearded one]

he needs to be on a bearded warhorse,

Okay, I am never going to let you live down that typo.

[ihavetoomuchminis]

A very funny typo indeed