D.R.A.I.C.H. - Tomb Kings (8th ed)

[Dyvim tvar]

The way I read the LOS rules, a unit with its back to the casket certainly is protected. None of my models have eyes in the backs of their heads.

[Hamstafish]

I have played tomb since i was a 10 year old. and the first tomb king dex had just been released. I was depressed about my dark elves being thrashed all 500 pts i had. and got myself a tomb king army. since then they have always bee my secondary army. they were incredibly good in those days. in my opinion as bad as demons were in there peak in 7th ed.

as daemons and vampires were released the un beat ability of my tomb kings vanished. but i never had problems with druchii as anything without unbreakability was easy game for flank charging chariots. then came 8th and tomb kings became useless. my chariots could get attacked back and killed easily. my core looked even more useless and all i had was a ridiculous number of power dice and some decent artil ad annoyance troops.

things my army struggles with. infantry of any kind. tomb kings can get the charge and will get the charge no matter what you do so knights and chariots are less of a threat. hydras are catapult fodder. and thinks like harpies and shades are the only units my chariots can threaten. but infantry blocks tomb kings have no answer to.

the biggest problem with tomb kings is that they are normally played by someone who has played them for ages and loves them as any one else would have given up on them ages ago. this experience means that tomb king players manage to scrape every bit of power from there book whereas with most other army's this is not the case

they have a lot of tricks that seem very powerful and effective but when you expect them they loose a lot of power. if i were playing against tomb kings id expect the following. my sorceress will be charged by a scorpion. my hydra will die to catapults. my knights/chariots will be charged by infantry if im not careful in there positioning. they should only be used as a counterattack force as tomb king infantry can and will out charge them due to magic.. and that war machine hunters beware as those chariots will turn around and charge.

tomb kings become infinitely easier to deal with if you play them accepting that catapults will fire twice. units will charge twice etc. be decisive. get infantry forwards. and remember everything is substandard.

your harpies should be on the catapults turn 2 and if you leave harpies close to combat units they should be safe from chariots. remember that chariots will be killed by harpies if the chariots dont charge and are charged in the flanks or rear. And a front charge with shade with adhw will do the trick as well so keep youre units within revenge distance of each other as tomb king units are far more expensive.

so chariots are to vulnerable to be used if there is a chance of counter charge by anything. tomb scorpions are lethal but cant win you a game being primarily a distracting/suicide unit.
and catapults simply serve as tomb kings redeeming grace.


as long as you have a have your fast troops into the tomb kings artil as soon as possible and don't make any mistakes like moving units unsupported the tomb king player shouldn't be able to win because druchii have an amazing book and tomb kings have an outdated book perfect for decade old outdated tactics but not for 8th ed. ( seems like im always stuck with a great and useless but awesome army)

most lists i see on the tactics forums are fine for beating tomb kings. as long as you save dice for the casket when your fast stuff is facing it and keep units supported you will win. it depresses me.

you can use generals ld for casket. and the casket must be visible and in your front arc in oder for it to work however it does work in combat if you can see the unit according to the latest faq ive read.. you can easily fly past any defense. by that time the rest of your army will be within threatening distance of the tomb king army and hell be overwhelmed with threats. and unable to deal with both harpies (keep dice for casket) and approaching threats.

if any of your units fight any of his at a equal unit to unit points you will win dramatically. remember that and avoid situations were this is not the case. and if you have harpies you will win. tomb kings greatest strength is how unusual they are, so there tricks are often new and catch people by surprise. This makes this both the most important and least important draich article as it has the greatest effect if read but is also least likely to be necessary due to tomb kings scarcity.

I disagree with pjeo on some things such as the wizards hat and the uselessness of the casket. But he has done a remarkable job of summing up tomb kings. It has also given me fresh inspiration to play some more games with my tomb kings and try out going combat lord heavy something i havnt considered.

[Pjeos]

Hi there hamstafish,

Like you, my regular TK opponent is a guy that started played WHF at the age of 10 with an army called Tomb Kings. I liked a lot something that you said:

the biggest problem with tomb kings is that they are normally played by someone who has played them for ages and loves them as any one else would have given up on them ages ago. this experience means that tomb king players manage to scrape every bit of power from there book whereas with most other army's this is not the case

Just commenting XD.

Now, back on topic,

I must disagree with most of what you wrote in your post. From what I've read, you seem to be very upset with your army. And I think I know why. Sure TKs are not overpowered at all, but they are no longer the weak army they were in 7ed.

Like you, my regular TK opponent started 8ed loosing most of his games. His first army lists included High Priests, mounted Kings in Chariots units, Vultures, fully geared characters (including Wizard Hat and Caskets) and blocks of Archers. These lists proved to have a poor response for many common threats like elite-infantry, Hydras, etc, just like you pointed.

I prepared a long response about all the theoretical side of our TK playstyle, but I thought that it would take ages to post and compare our perspectives and then get to a conclusion. As i said in the first post, we're not tactical geniuses, but we wanted to share our experiences both from the druchii and the TK PoV, so that people in druchii.net know what to expect from TKs, the nastiest tricks and all that stuff. But we are not giving THE way to play TKs. Yet, this friend of mine is being very successful in the latest 10 tourneys, managing to stay in the top5 out of 16-20 people. We consider it a very good performance for TK's standards, considering the wide range of armies and the rather average abilities of players around here.

I will though comment on one thing: you say that TK tricks are powerful when unexpected, but that they are poor when expected. But this goes against my expirience so far. My TK opponent doesn't hope to surprise me: he knows I know all his tricks and he knows I can't do much to avoid some of them. I've played nearly 30 games against him, I know his army list by heart and yet there are mechanics out of my control that a TK player can exploit: I get 3 DD from WoM, my TK opponent throws 5D6 S4 at my WEs, kills 12, shoots 20 arrows at them, kills another 3, shooting phase and another 20 arrows and another 3 WEs down. How on earth can I avoid that?
You are right to say TKs struggle to face elite infantry, but forgot to mention "as long as it is T4 and has a proper AS (4+ or better)". But dark elf infantry is not that dangerous for them.

Still, I know it's hard to convince someone only with words, I'd be glad to play with you so that I can better explain myself, but I'm afraid that's just very unlikely to happen.

The only piece of advice I can give are the following:

-assume that most TK troops are substandard as you said. Focus fire on those who you cannot hope to win so that they reach you in low numbers. There are certain infantries you won't hurt with shooting, like Warriors of Chaos, but these are still vulnerable to S4 missiles. And when they eventually reach you, you'd better have a Prince/King that helps with the CR.

-keep playing with your TKs, keep trying all units and keep trying different approach to different armies. It took us nearly 14 games to get to our current TK list and so far we are very pleased with it.

If only we could have a few games...XD


See ya

[Hamstafish]

By elite i mean elite in comparison to what tomb kings can field for example i cannot deal with corsairs (and the other druchii player in my group has a pirate army) which are cheap enough to betaken in large numbers. But i accept the point that tomb kings can spam magic missiles to destroy units. which actually is something i hadn't previously considered. i tried this in a game against a high elf opponent. It helped that my hat rolled lore of fire. but i managed to incinerate a unit of sword masters with teclis in one magic phase.. it worked wonders. yay for 6d6 st4 hits and a flame storm. however there is a very easy solution. its called an 18 inch range. which meas that in order for my casters to be in range for such a devastating salvo i need to have all my casters close to the target. which generally puts them in a position in danger of being charged and killed.. so i would rest my case of keeping your units supported so that one can get revenge for the other.

i also see little use from the so called sponge bob combo as this unit is a huge amount of points.almost 600. And can be easily destroyed as it consists of t3 models with almost no save ad ws 2 ??. i shall try this combo but im very skeptical. 40 skellies + sponge bob vs 40 druchii spears. spears are half the points. spears attack first kill about 12. tomb kings attack back killing 7. tombkings lose by 5 ,2 crumble. the dark elf player has killed twice as may tombkings as hes lost and the tomb king units needs at least 3 incantations to keep it in the fight. this seems ineffective but i shall try i never the less.

and PJEOs thanks for the first tomb king victory against a decent opponent in a month>

[Pjeos]

Hi there,

In the Sponge Bob example, first of all we must take into account that this combo is there to tarpit "elite" units. Dark Elf Spearmen are not elite, nor Corsairs. In a game against WoC, this unit "marched" into the Watch Tower in the Watch Tower Scenario in turn 2 and held it for the whole game. The opponent tried to gain it with his 15 strong Chosens of Khorne with Halberds and Banner of Eternal Flame, but it failed. This unit dished out 31 Attacks that hitted on 3+, wounded on 2+ rerollable, dealt an average 17 wounds, won by 18 (17+charge) and 9 skellies more crumbled, so that 26 skellies every round were killed. Then, in the TK's magic phase all were brought back to unlife. And that was the game XD.

Under normal circumstances (that is, Chosens charge and not in a building), the Chosen unit would dish out 21 attacks that would cause an average 12 wounds, the King kills a Chosen, healing 1 skellie, and Chosens win combat by 12+1(charge)-1(King's wound)-2(Skellies ranks)=9, another 5 skellies crumble, 16skellies dead. TK's phase, all skellies back. Then, through the next 2 rounds of combat, the Sponge will loose 32 skellies until next magic phase, and you can either bring them all back to life or heal just a few, say 15-20. But in all this time you will have been able to countercharge with something in the flank. Let's say...6 Ushabti, a Giant or 1 or 2 Scorpions, be imaginative...XD.

The fact is that you need high grade of coordination to achieve this, TKs are not an easy army to play, so let's just assume that there are things that even with the nastiest TK combos the TK player won't overcome. . But hey, this is in the case of fighting Khorne Chosens with Halberds which are possibly one the best hammer units in the game. But you'll have no problem in beating Sword Masters, Witch Elves, Black Guard, Saurus, any dwarven infantry, etc with a Sponge Bob King and Friends. And if you happened to be fighting r&f units (which you shouldn't given your nice charging range for choosing your targets), you will need no more than 1 or 2 incantations every 2 turns to keep the combat stable. Give it a try if you wish and let us know.


On the missile spam issue, it is true that you need all your priests in the 18 range to devastate the unit. But, in our case, we play TK defensively and it is the opponent that comes to us (except with Dwarves or Empire -_-). For example, I march my 20 strong Black Guard in my first turn. Your first turn and you shoot the 5D6 missile spam, 10-12 die. Second turn, I march again, you shot another 4D6 missile spam, another 8-10 die. If there were any BG alive, I'm sure those would not be a pain to deal with. But if you try to position to snipe enemy units (like you did with Teclis and his Sword Masters) this will be a lot harder to achieve, that's for sure, but in our case, we've been rather successful playing in a defensive/counterattack style, sitting back, unleashing firepower and then charging into favourable charges. Maybe not a funny game for the opponent, but, hey, this is TKs right? we've found no other way of winning a game...XD

Anyway, if you want to get rid of Teclis you can also send him a couple of Scorpions or the Sponge Bob guy. Or you may as well ignore him as I very much doubt he can deal damage you may not be able to heal back, although this may mean he will be effectively shutting down your magic phase, but, oh wel, we're talking about Teclis, no "normal" Lvl4 will be such a pain.


And, as you see, there is after all something to do with your good old TK army against some top opponents like HEs, isn't it?. How do you think your opponent will prevent you spamming missiles at his SwordMasters? He can't even be sure to be aout of range because you can march and spam him or send him some nice flamming skulls. Maybe he'll try to rush to kill your Priests, maybe he will try to block LoS to his Sword Masters, maybe...who knows? just keep playing and developing your list and your style .

Happy gaming.