Knuckling down with Khemri: Army Composition and Basic Rules

Hi everybody, welcome to the first of the five part series which will culminate in my push to suggest that the most advantageous lord choice for standard 2000 point battles is indeed the Liche High Priest.
This article will be an in-depth tactical discussion about Tomb King Basics, how this stacks up in comparison to other WHFB armies and crucially how this may change or affect our army compositions. This guide is probably aimed at newer players starting out with Tomb Kings, although I’m sure veteran players will hopefully find some value in this as well. Will this article be bias? You bet it will!! :P Therefore I repeat though that these are only my opinions and any contributions will, as always be extremely welcome. Without further ado, lets knuckle down with Khemri…

Why play Tomb Kings?
At first glance Tomb Kings look like a terrible army, a mere parody of the Vampire Counts. They have poor stats, no marching, no raising new units, and seemingly very little in terms of potency. Yet, Tomb Kings with a little bit of magic and tactics become one of the most manoeuvrable and deadly in the Warhammer World. One of the advantages of Tomb Kings is the fact that all models are undead, meaning that they will never flee under any circumstance and are thus reliable (reliably bad). The one word that describes Tomb Kings is "relentless". They are also surprisingly tactically versatile with all cavalry, shooty-magic heavy or monster heavy armies all available for the general's disposal. This is in stark contrast to Vampire Counts who can’t shoot and basically only have two styles of play. Tomb Kings also have fantastic models - all completely brand new (poor VC players :D ). Tomb Kings are also one of the cheaper armies to purchase, with so many versatile box sets, we can potentially make 80% of our armies from plastic, which is great on the hip pocket. But the thing I like best about Tomb Kings is how I can beat proud haughty elves who have trained for millennia or rune encrusted dwarves using cruddy Ws2 skeletons and a bit of tactics. I also like their unique style of play which is second to none in the Warhammer world. To all new Tomb King players I urge you to persist even after a few early losses as I would rate Tomb Kings as one of the most challenging armies to play, so persist persist persist and eventually you will get there… In the meantime lets have a look on how to make a few armies.

Army Composition- Tactically Balanced Armies (TAB) versus All Eggs in One Basket (AEIOB)
Firstly I want to lay out my approach to army composition- that is to create tactically balanced armies (TAB) that can take on any army without any alterations. What is the benefit of this? Well it develops your tactics in effectively using TK units and essentially its good sportsmanship meaning fun for you and you opponent, which is essentially why most people play Warhammer in the first place. But firstly, what do I mean by TAB’s? Well in the normal context of a 2000-point game, TAB’s essentially allow you to participate in all phases of the game (moving, shooting, magic close combat), so your army isn’t “built” purely for close combat or to camp and shoot. If you look at most tournament armies you will see that tactically balanced armies are ultimately the most successful all round army, allowing players to take on any opposition with some degree of success. Lets have a few examples- an empire artillery army consisting of 2 Hellblasters, 4 Cannons and a whole line of hand gunners might completely pulverise an all cavalry army, but against armies like ambushing Beastmen, this “effective” army will be routed in a couple of turns. Don’t get me wrong on this issue- TAB’s don’t have to be generic and boring, far from it. You can choose to tailor your army to fit your style of play. For example I prefer TAB’s slightly geared towards defence, so you may find a slightly more shooty element to my army, where as an aggressive player may have more chariots etc… So overall my key point here is to create balanced armies as they offer one of the most rewarding styles of play and are usually some of the most successful.

The opposite of this is to take an All Eggs in One Basket Army (AEIOB). You know what I mean, 500+ point units, 600 point Vampire Lords on the Zombie dragons. Essentially what you have here is a one hit wonder, take it out and the army is doomed. While I am not saying that AEIOB armies cannot be successful, for of course they can. I am merely observing the fact that they will work-but for only X many occasions. As you encounter players of greater experience they will know how to deal with that unit of 4 chariots with the TK and magic banner costing over 500 points, or that unit of 24 Tomb Guard with the TK at a similar expense. May I also mention that the style of play in an AEIOB army is also very repetitive. What will my 500+ point chariot unit do in this battle again? The same as they have always done in my 20 previous ones. What will happen if I loose my 500+ point unit early in the game? My whole army will struggle and will probably get massacred. Generally a #%$ boring game for both parties, leaving you with a hollow victory even if you win. While I admit I sometimes indulge in a bit of harmless fun against friends fielding a massive chariot unit with a TK or specifically tailoring an army against a particular force, the most satisfying games are usually the ones where two all round balanced armies are against each other in a tightly locked contest. You know, where a glorious chariot charge rescues your crumbling skeletons or when your carrions take revenge on the unit of harpies, which murdered your Liche Priest.

So overall when raising your Tomb King army I am suggesting you go for balanced armies. Not all eggs in one basket. They are too easily neutralised, for a lucky cannon shot, magic spell or even poor dice rolling may cost you the game. In my army for example, no individual unit is over 230 points. Not one. My most expensive fighter character is 172 points and I have about 90 models in my army. I also only spend 600 points on characters. Did I also mention that in all but the rarest cases, I WILL have magic superiority (thanks to LHP) to support the 1400 points of troops? Yes I know this is a bit extreme, but in the end it is a personal decision. Call me an idealist but I chose to play WARhammer not HEROhammer and in most cases I get the last laugh when the points are tallied. For the fluff-masters out there, I believe it is also more fluffy to have tactically balanced armies, for it would be a stupid Tomb King indeed who would tailor the army to be entombed with him to be only good against dwarves when he awakes from his crypt and realises he is fighting Orcs. No! A TK entombs with him an army that can rise and defend his pyramid against all comers... Sorry to bore the veterans out there, but there are so many newer players who believe in creating an ultimate “uber” unit and after a few battles they get disenfranchised and simply give up the game…. Moving on to another crucial point- lets have a look at our special rules.

Special Rules
Tomb Kings have a host of special rules, which shape our style of play and indeed how our army is composed. They offer a unique style of play creating both advantages and disadvantages that we need to be aware of.

Fear- If enemies want to charge they have to test on their Leadership or else they can’t move that turn. If we charge them and our Unit Strength is equal to or greater than theirs then they would automatically flee from our charge if they fail a Leadership test. This is great, as on quite a few occasions an “uber” dwarf unit has fled before the might of my skeleton unit :P and were then subsequently run down in the magic phase with my carrion if they weren’t already chased down by the skellies themselves. If we charge them and our US is less than theirs then they may need 6’s to hit if they fail a Ld test- which is fantastic as less casualties means a greater chance of breaking your opponent. However in my opinion the greatest advantage to fear is being to autobreak opponents if we outnumber them and win Combat resolution, even if its by 1!! The easiest way to do this is by large skeleton blocks- around 20-25 with a standard. This almost guarantees us +5CR (+3 for ranks, +1 standard and probably +1 for outnumbering). If your opponent rolls badly in combat or if the skeletons actually manage to kill something for once then even beating them by 1 will autobreak and allow us to pursue. The chances of this happening can even be further improved by a flank charge- removing your opponent’s ranks thus forcing them to have to kill 4 skellies plus however many our troops manage to kill in order to stop themselves from autobreaking. This even works if the unit is frenzied or stubborn!! So in summary fear is a very powerful ally… so make use of it in your army composition, by beefing up your main skeleton units or trying to get a timely flank charge in to support your troops.

Immune to psychology- This is a double edged sword. On one hand we are immune to things such as panic, terror, which allows us to be more relentless and reliable. However being immune to psychology also doesn’t allow us to flee from charges which can be a real pain, especially if we know our unit will get crunched. What does this mean to army composition and tactics though? It means that unless we are going to charge, we have to stay out of the charge range of enemy units as we can’t escape. Also it means that the positioning of our priests so that their incantations are in range are crucial as if we are just out from a charge, next turn we will have no option but to receive one in return. This really stuffs up units like our fast cavalry, which therefore can’t flee and thus kind of defeats the purpose of having fast cavalry in the first place.

5+ to hit for shooting- That’s right everything we shoot is at 5+ to hit as we don’t count modifiers (positive and negative) to our rolls to hit as our shots have been guided by some asp goddess. This is really good as without it, bowmen wouldn’t be a viable option in our army. This is really quite useful considering we can move, be over half range, and shoot at chameleon skink skirmishers who are behind hard cove and still we will only need a 5 to hit (compared to a normal –6 modifier!!). This ability eliminates a TK weakness of dealing with scouts as we lack (or have inefficient) “auto hitting” artillery, magic missiles and our own scout skirmishers. Although this is tempered somewhat by us not getting +1 to hit large targets or have the ability to stand and shoot while being charged. Combine this with this ability with the incantation of urgency and we have quite awesome and underestimated missile fire. In fact skeleton bowmen firing twice at 5’s to hit is equivalent to elven bowmen shooting at half range. For example 16 bowmen firing twice= 16 elven bowmen needing 3’s to hit. All in all this is an awesome ability, which really adds flexibility to the army list.

Unbreakable and loosing wounds due to combat resolution- Undead are unique in that their units never break and flee from combat. Never. Ever. This makes them very reliable, knowing that they can receive any charge and still potentially be there after all the carnage. But with reliability comes mediocrity, the catch to this is that they loose the number of wounds with no saves by the number you lost combat resolution by. For example if you loose the combat by 4, at the end of the fight 4 more wounds will additionally be caused on the unit with no saves possible. So potentially after a real deadly charge by grail knights or by being flanked, a unit of “unbreakable” skellies can still be destroyed. So what does this mean to army composition/tactics? It means that we need to have units to receive the charge (if that’s their purpose) so that they don’t all crumble and the enemy breaks through your line- this can be done by having sufficiently large units. Also we need to be extra careful to protect out flanks, as without rank bonus you will find that a unit will crumble in no time. Thus perhaps it would be beneficial to have mutual support our units to have double or even triple teams to deal with enemy threats. Remember though that healing can restore the dead, but there are only so many healing incantations you can cast….

No marching: Self explanatory really. None of our units can march at all- not even skirmishers or characters. They all move at their base movement, but we do get double distance for charging. What this means is that deployment becomes an even more important phase of the game, as we simply can’t redeploy our troops at the start of the game if we screwed up somewhere. This also means that we can easily be outflanked. But there is a catch to this. With magic we can potentially be one the THE most manoeuvrable in the warhammer world. With a few subtle incantations we can have 24” charging chariots/cavalry, 40” carrions, 15” ushabtis 21” tomb scorpions etc… As you can see we are quite manoeuvrable, but there are only so many incantations to go around and be assured that your opponent will make every effort to dispel these game winning spells…

Hieratic Casting Order- all our spells are cast in order from the banners first all the way to the Casket of Souls last. While some may believe that this is a disadvantage, I would argue to the contrary. The opponent knows what we’re casting so will be saving dispel dice for the “key” incantations. It’ll upset them completely if the dice they save for your spells isn’t enough because you reveal a new banner or if you roll higher than average for your incantation dice. Also if they plan to dispel a particular spell (e.g urgency), then they will have to wait and watch all and LET through all your other spells, which is particularly unnerving, knowing that your spells will never fail. This is most evident in the casket, where the opponent saves 2-3 dice to dispel knowing that it is last, while your other (arguably) more important spells are let through.

Loosing wounds if hierophant dies: Same system as Vampire Counts except that a priest is much easier to kill- 2 T3 wounds (3 if using LHP :P). So protect him at all costs with items such as the collar of shapesh or the cloak of the dunes. Positioning and identifying threats is a key here, especially from enemy fliers/skirmishers/fast cavalry. More in-depth analysis will be offered in protecting priests in Part 2.

Need to have at least 2 characters: All TK armies must have a hierophant and Tp/Tk as general meaning that a lower point battles TK have to spend a heck of a lot on characters!! Thus it can be argued that TK are a little bit unbalanced in battles less than 2000 points, as we lack the magic to invigorate our armies and to afford basic troops (especially in 500 point Border Patrol battles).

Comparison to Other WHFB Armies
Now how does all this stack up to the other armies in the WHFB world? The best word that describes them I think is “unique”. While we may not have the devastating artillery embankments of the Empire, the mobile armour of the Bretonnian’s and the brutal close combat ability of the Lizardmen, what we have is an army that demands and rewards meticulous planning and coordination of your troops more so than any other army in the WHFB world (except DE maybe). We have reliability, we have relentless magic, we have mobile troops, and most importantly we have flexibility, which all fosters a unique style of play. I believe that there are 3 key principles to a successful TK army:

Coordination for no one TK unit (some exceptions) can take on an enemy 1 on 1 and expect to come out on top. We need to have double teams and magic plays a big part in accomplishing this.

Magic: I firmly believe that all TK armies must have at the VERY LEAST more Incantation dice than your opponents dispel pool. Why? Because TK’s live, breathe and ultimately become competitive all be cause of magic. Without it we merely become the 4” moving expensive Ws2 skeletons again, with it the TK army is transformed into a fast mobile and deadly killing machine. This I believe applies to all army types- be it all cavalry, construct heavy or balanced. More info about this will appear in “Illuminating the Incantations” so keep your eyes peeled… :P

Efficiency\Purpose: This basically depends on the first two points. Units should always be taken to fulfil a specific purpose in your army and should not be taken just “for the sake of it”. TK units also have specific roles, for example skeletons are immovable in defence but can’t kill a fly, where as chariots can massacre infantry but are smashed if they are ever charged. Therefore in the deployment phase every effort should be made in order to make sure that every unit fulfils its designated purpose/role. You should also try to this as efficiently as possible with as few points as possible. This is one of the first reasons why I like the Liche High Priest as a lord choice as it is the most efficient character choice that allows me to have magical superiority- which is crucial for all tK armies.

Brief general Tomb King Strategies
Generally you want to outnumber enemy units in close combat, which may be hard to do as our troops are so expensive. If we take a look at 5-point Clan Rats or 2-point Goblins we will never outnumber them. Then how do we autobreak them you ask? 2 words. Flank charges. This is an area where Tomb Kings excel. Perhaps I would go as far to call them the best army (elves are close) to get a flank charge due to the sudden induced speed from incantations. Once again Coordination is the cornerstone of success.

Summary of Innate Strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
-very tactically flexible for undead army,
-magically fast
-powerful magic
-fairly cheap army to buy- low amount of models (high points cost) combine with loads of plastics, easy to paint
-Relentless (due to special rules and troop choices)
- Unique playing style that rewards meticulous planning and use of tactics

Weaknesses
-poor magic defence
-somewhat large reliance on magic and therefore characters
-poor rank and file troops
-hard to get used to
-lack of really high strength units
-not as diverse a range of troop choices in comparison to armies such as Empire, Orcs and Goblins

Thanks for reading!! Any comments, criticisms and suggestions will be happily received. I look forward to your replies.

Ps. I have increased it to a 5 part series as there was so much stuff to cover!! Next part will examine the role of units in a TK army.. Keep your eyes peeled!!! B)

We want more! :thumb:

50% of section 2 is also up at http://www.khemri.co.uk :thumb:
Glad you enjoyed it!!

The rest will have to wait till after the holidays B)

Minor bumpage so that Part 1 fits in with Part 2.

Hope no one minds.

:)

not at all... I really appreciate all your hard work... thumbs up to you... :clap: :clap: :clap: