Good units for a competetive Tomb king army?

[Fizzy]

I want to compete in fantasy for the first time in my life.

I got a Liche priest and a codex.

It will be somewhere from 500-1000pts tournament this fall. And I would need some help choosing some punchers. I am really bad at picking units in fantasy.

Thanks!

P.S: Dont need and army lists. Just a little shopping list for some good units

[The bearded one]

I don't have a tomb king army, but I am interested in them for the future. I don't think you can really go wrong with skeleton archers and chariots as the base.

[Fizzy]

Many go with spears but I dont know. It is quite good against charging enemies.

I am going to germany and was thinking: " Hey they got Games workshop there! Why dont I buy my Tomb King stuff while I am there?"

So hopefully this thread will give me some hints

[Rosstifer]

Necropolis Knights are very very good. Tough, and lots of grinding potential. If your group uses Speciaal Characters Ramhotep is awesome, Necro Knights with a rerollable save is nice. Core, you want lots of small units of Bowmen, Chariots are popular, but I think they are a bit meh, maybe have one unit if you want the TK feel.

The Casket of Souls and 2 Screaming Skull Catapults are good. Tomb Guard are pricy, but NZ's No2 Ranked Player uses 40 of them with HW/S to great effect. Knights won't go near them, and they kick out some decent damage. I was sceptical of this unit too, but he's had good success with it.

For characters, I think dual Lvl 4 is good, Nehekara and Light go very well together, so many buffs/debuffs! I've played against single Lvl 4 on Nehekara though, and that worked fine too.

Tomb Kings aren't the easiest army to do well with, but they are stronger than people give them credit for. Out of the last 16 games with my brutal WOC, I've only lost one, and it was to Tomb Kings!

[Enigmatik1]

Core
Skeleton Archers
Skeleton Horse Archers
Chariots

I'd steer clear of Skeleton Warriors and Horsemen until larger point games. Both need tons of support to be effective.

Special
Necropolis Knights
Carrion
Warsphinxes
Tomb Guard

I'd also steer clear of EBTS units until you get a better feel for the army. That being said, all of our special units can be put to good use, although Scorpions and Ushabti can be kind of tricky.

Rare
All of the rares are good, but be sure to field Screaming Skull Catapults in pairs if you run them.

[Echunia]

Enigmatik1 has pretty much got it right.

My tip for a fun 1000 points list would be:
archers as a bunker, then chariots and necro knights and maybe some redirectors (horse archers or carrion) if you can squeeze them in. Basically it's fast and the units are good on their own so it's beginner friendly

As for the future, some people may harbour illusions that spear blocks are effective, they are not. A crappy unit that needs 300 pts of support to be halfway decent is not good. Stay clear for your own sake, if you want skeleton warriors go for the hw /shield, then they at least soak damage better. If you want fighting skeletons, go for tomb guard in bigger points, they are so much better and benefit a lot more from royal characters.

[tw1386]

Pretty much what everybody else has said!

As for characters, I'd get a High Liche Priest and at least a Tomb Prince for your chariots, as WS5 chariots are pretty brutal, and make sure you put a magic weapon on him as you don't want to get this big unit of chariots tied up by a Spirit Host base or anything ethereal really. (I've seen it happen). But since it's such a low points game, I'd go for things that are hard to kill at that points level, Warshpinx for sure, and chariots. Possibly a casket.

[Fizzy]

Thank you! And today I will be off to Germany.

[Zirkonicky]

Core
Skeleton Archers
Skeleton Horse Archers
Chariots

Chariots are nasty! And since the horse also get to fight, they're not only packing firepower but attackpower as well. But, the main strenght of the chariots is the *&^$*%^*(^ impacthits! Cost me a few units of WoC playing against TK.

Skeleton Archers aren't really THAT good. They're cheap, but with bs2 not really a threat. Skeleton Warriors do more damage imo

[GodlessM]

Core
Skeleton Archers
Skeleton Horse Archers
Chariots

I'd steer clear of Skeleton Warriors and Horsemen until larger point games. Both need tons of support to be effective.

Special
Necropolis Knights
Carrion
Warsphinxes
Tomb Guard

I'd also steer clear of EBTS units until you get a better feel for the army. That being said, all of our special units can be put to good use, although Scorpions and Ushabti can be kind of tricky.

Rare
All of the rares are good, but be sure to field Screaming Skull Catapults in pairs if you run them.

This but change Horse Archers to Skeleton Warriors. I cannot stress how handy a 170pts unit is that can hold up enemy long enough to give you some breathing space. People cry they hold up nothing over Unstable, but deployed 5 wide with sword and board, they minimise attacks back and have at least some sort of save. I've held up Grave Guard bunkers, Greater Daemons, White Lion, the works with these guys.

[Kaapeli]

Skeleton Archers aren't really THAT good. They're cheap, but with bs2 not really a threat. Skeleton Warriors do more damage imo

The thing with Archers is that despite their low BS they always hit on 5+ disregarding all modifiers (Arrows of Asaph), they're cheap and not really that much worse in close combat than warriors (warriors only have slightly better saves and their armor is often negateted).

[Enigmatik1]

Chariots are nasty! And since the horse also get to fight, they're not only packing firepower but attackpower as well. But, the main strenght of the chariots is the *&^$*%^*(^ impacthits! Cost me a few units of WoC playing against TK.

Skeleton Archers aren't really THAT good. They're cheap, but with bs2 not really a threat. Skeleton Warriors do more damage imo

It isn't so much that Skeleton Archers are that good, they just a better value (imo) than Skeleton Warriors. I've found that relative to one another, Skeleton Archers are more valuable than Warriors. I personally find Warriors practically unfieldable but I recognize that their value is extremely metagame dependent.

This but change Horse Archers to Skeleton Warriors. I cannot stress how handy a 170pts unit is that can hold up enemy long enough to give you some breathing space. People cry they hold up nothing over Unstable, but deployed 5 wide with sword and board, they minimise attacks back and have at least some sort of save. I've held up Grave Guard bunkers, Greater Daemons, White Lion, the works with these guys.

I have never been able to use them as such, GM but I can kinda see it. I think they can do just fine in certain situations (vs. units with low attack volume and monsters, for example). With my metagame, my friends strongly favor mutli-attacking infantry and tends to avoid monsters except hellpits and hydrae.

[Snowflake]

The thing with Archers is that despite their low BS they always hit on 5+ disregarding all modifiers (Arrows of Asaph), they're cheap and not really that much worse in close combat than warriors (warriors only have slightly better saves and their armor is often negateted).

Agreed. Always hitting on 5's can't be stressed enough. They're fantastic for destroying those pesky skirmishers that may bug your SSCs, Shades and Gutter Runners hate them. They are also very good for thinning out stuff hiding in buildings. They're even good just killing stuff in general, since despite popular internetz wizdom S3 can still kill stuff. As cheap as they are you can get a LOT of them without really hurting yourself, and if you get a single bubble smiting off you can very easily put out over 100 shots in a turn.

As for the rest, pretty much what was mentioned here.
Casket is pretty much a must (though maybe not in low points games like the one you describe)
SSCs
Carrion (cheap and brutal now)
Chariots
Archers
Necropolis Knights (over 2000 points only I would say)
Warsphinx

[jtrowell]

I would start by buying a bataillon, it is more expensive than the previous one for just 8 more skeletons, but you will get:
- 40 skeletons, that can be build as warriors and/or archers
- 8 cavalry (can be build with bow or spear+lance)
- 3 chariots (one of the best core unit)

Then a sphinx kit that you will build as a war sphinx. The kit will give you a plastic king with great weapon on foot (or to use in a chariot conversion), and with the unused necrosphinx pieces, you could try to convert a Hierotitan/colossus if you find a way to model some legs or some alternate replacement.

This could give you for exemple the followins starting army:

Characters:

- one lich priest as your hierophant (you said that you already have the model)
- one prince or king

Core:

- 3 chariots (I would make them with full command, the musician is useful for fast reform, the banner is great for CR, and you can take a magic one with them, and the champion can help to make the unit survive longer by having some wound assigned to him)
- 11 archers (deployed 6x2, with your hierophant here to bunker it)
- 29 warriors (I like the look of the spear better, but as they cost more points you might prefer to assemble them with hand weapons), deployed 6x5 with the prince/king. They won't kill much be themselves, but with the prince or king they will be hard to kill
- 5 horse archers (without command) use a warmachine hunters/redirector (keep the 3 other horses unsassembled for now)

Special:

- War sphinx

Rare:

- Hierotitan/colossus (if you have converted or found some legs to use with the necrosphinx pieces)


You will then be able to expand from there.