Tomb Kings skellies horde

[grhino]

Alright, I am stuck on this one decision:

do I take 40 skellies, lw, shields, l.a., spears in a horde for full attacks when at full strenght, and go for that 1-3 wounds per turn extra, or;
-do I take the same amount of points, and get some 10 skellies extra which will lose me 7-10 attacks per round (depending on what I am fighting) but does give me a 6++ parry save (which saves about 1 model per round of combat against an average opponents--hitting me on 4+ due to a prince being present) and keeps my rank bonus for longer?

I think mathematically I should go for the spears, right? It's led by a Prince, and provides a bunker for my HLP (HLP could be deployed in Tomb Guard bunker which now has a prince and necrotect in it).

[MR. GRUMPY]

My understanding is that skellies do not rack many kills so most people run them deep with hw and shield for that extra bit of survivability.

[ftayl5]

If you put a king in the unit and have a strong enough magic phase to be confident about getting some other buffs on them, then a horde with spears is doable.
If not, go for ranks and don't take spears.

[Sexiest_hero]

king spears, and spam killing blow spell.

[Hashut-Up!]

Putting a high liche priest in that unit may not be such a good idea. I like the suggestion that sexiest_hero made, but it makes the unit much more offensive which would be a risk for the HLP since you don't want him near combat at all really. The investment of a prince or king is a lot of points to put into a bunker thats meant to take hits for the HLP.

[Mr. Shine]

I would have thought if you were hording spear-armed units you'd want units of at least 50 to allow for casualties while still hopefully retaining full attacks.

[Yamabushi]

In addition to the KB spell, Desiccation / Soulblight is also a must. The issue with skellie horde + royals is not in hitting, but actually wounding.

[Undyingswarm]

Skellies is fine... But for them to work effectively other than tar pitting... Getting the Incantation of Desication and Incantaion of Righteous Smiting off is a must. Give your HLP Nefarra's Scrolls of Mighty Incantation, for last resorts, and make sure you have Hierotitan and a Casket. Of course if you're going to run the HLP you might as well kick it up a notch and use Grand Hierophant Khatep. And run lots of tomb princes.

[Sexiest_hero]

or run Arkan the black!

[Kaiserdean]

Take hws plus your Tomb King for skellies attacking at WS 6. Then add a necrotect so they have hate.

[Plebian]

Take Bows.

[GrandmasterWang]

Spear horde looks better, do it.

Also works better with all the tk spells

[Spiney Norman]

Alright, I am stuck on this one decision:

do I take 40 skellies, lw, shields, l.a., spears in a horde for full attacks when at full strenght, and go for that 1-3 wounds per turn extra, or;
-do I take the same amount of points, and get some 10 skellies extra which will lose me 7-10 attacks per round (depending on what I am fighting) but does give me a 6++ parry save (which saves about 1 model per round of combat against an average opponents--hitting me on 4+ due to a prince being present) and keeps my rank bonus for longer?

I think mathematically I should go for the spears, right? It's led by a Prince, and provides a bunker for my HLP (HLP could be deployed in Tomb Guard bunker which now has a prince and necrotect in it).

There are two ways to run skeleton warriors, all or nothing.

"All" means spears, king or prince, necrotect and at least 50 bodies. You will need to cast cursed blades on them to actually accomplish anything in combat because with the best will in the world they are still only str 3. I've tried this a few times, but it has never worked out that well to me, it does depend on what you face regularly, but be warned that even so tooled up a skeleton unit will never be able to compete with the game's better combat units like chaos warriors or saurus. Also don't try using them against anything that can't be killing blowed (i.e larger than cavalry size) because cursed blades wont work and you'l be back to trying to wound with str 3.

"Nothing" means a unit of 30+ with hand weapons in bus formation (5 across by as many as you have deep) with no characters. This unit is simply there to act as a speed bump and hold enemy units for a turn so you can smash your chariot/necropolis knight hammer into their flank.

Whatever happens, never, ever put your hierophant in a unit you want to see combat, just don't do it, while its true TK don't suffer from crumble as much as VC putting your hiero on the front line is inviting disaster.

[Zeroth]

Take Bows.

Horde formation with bows is not a bad idea. Double shot spell and you're golden.

[Frankly]

Take Bows.

lol

I wish there was a 'like' feature on warseer sometimes.