Simple Changes To Our Book, a man can dream, can't he?

I know this is useless now but i was just thinking of a few slight changes to our book that could solve a lot of its problems(ok, i confess, there is a bit of wishlisting too), i know that alas it is but a dream.
Nonetheless i wanted to hear your thoughts on them.

Nehekharan undead may elect to hold or stand and shoot as charge reaction.
Entombed beneath the sands
Reclaimed by the desert makes you wait two turns instead of killing the unit.

Necrotect
Stone shaper:
Any unit of constructs that includes a necrotect does not suffer from the penalties to healing given by the nehek lore attribute (it doesnt make our sphinxes overpowered, makes ushabti viable and fits with the fluff cuz it finally gives the necrotect a reason to be with constructs!)

Necrosphinx-250
S6 WS5 (at least now he is a little more adapted too the moster killing role he is supposed to have)

Screaming Skull catapult
Skulls of the foe-15 points

The restless dead(lore attibute)
If a character is present in the unit, the owning player may choose to heal him or the unit. Characters recover a single wound. Characters may be healed in this manner once per phase.

Sakhmets Incantation of Skullstorm
If the vortex passes over a Nehekharan Undead unit, instead of dealing damage it heals the unit as per the lore attribute.

Even thought this is useless, at least i wrote it down

I'd love to see us get some benefit from Steadfast along with VC. Perhaps halving the Crumble damage from combat resolution if you outrank them.

Love the idea on Stone-Shaper, gives him a nice job and makes him useful in most of our units.

I'd like to see our Constructs standardised because as it stands, they are all over the place.
High toughness, no armour sphinx. High armour, no toughness Knights. Why do none of them have an actual armour, instead of the stock 5+ Construct.
Personally I'd like to see high Toughness, respectable armour and a fairly low damage output as our 'style'. Giving the Sphinx, Ushabti and Necrolith light armour for a 4+ save. Perhaps changing the Knights to T5/4+. Just something in common would be nice.


Finally, I hatehatehate Skullstorm with a passion. It is the only direct damage spell in a Lore of augments/hexes, wastes the Lore attribute and is a fairly stupid concept to start with.
I'd like to replace it with something like 'Return of the Golden Age' from SoM. Augment which grants +1 Init/WS/BS, removes Unstable and allows us to March/Charge reactions. Essentially makes our unit into an Unbreakable living unit, which seems fairly solid for a #6 spell.

Another idea would be that Dessicate makes an enemy Unstable on the super-cast version rather than -D3. It makes it more predictable and opens the door for some devastating anti-horde when combined with Necroknights.

I'd like to see the Sphinx drop in toughness and enter in an armour save instead. Also they need a Strength boost hard. How can all that stone hit just as hard as an elf with a great weapon? I think not.

Skullstorm should augment us. Restless Dead attribute should effect constructs once per spell.

Points drops.

Something needs to be done about the lack of steadfast and no bonus from it.

Even the auto break from fear causing enemy should be brought back as fear equates to nothing nowadays.

Drop the mask to 50 points. Infact reduce the cost of most things a little.

Give the Scorpion a wound back.

For 90 points on the banner of the hidden dead give me something I don't mind paying for like the unit/s that emerge within 12" can charge the turn they arrive.

Oh and give the giants their damn heavy armour back.

Just some ideas, but you're right, we'll be waiting a while.

Colossus deserves at least light armor, and unstoppable assault should simply always trigger, not only on the charge.

Tomb swarms should be allowed to be bought per 1

(carrion per 1 would be overpowered )

I used to think ushabti were terribly overpriced. right now I'd say they deserve light armor or a 5pt discount.

necrosphinx deserves simply the hkb rule, or the special attack should hit automatically (last one seems nicer, more random)

I would like to see EBtS be an option, not mandatory. I would love to be able to line up my scorps or stalkers with the rest of my army in certain situations.

Also, better armor saves on constructs (except Knights). Healing more than one wound per phase on constructs (once per spell seems fair).

And healing of characters. It's absurd that we can't do this when every army with access to lore of life can. Limit it to one wound per casting on characters, and the healing only affects the character or the unit, not both.

Change unstable to work more like demons. Take a break test (that can be affected by Steadfast and BSB), and if failed lose wounds equal to amount test failed by. Or lose double what you failed by if it needs to be more of a penalty.

I think our movement spell needs to be modified. Either allow it to affect units multiple times a turn, or let units charge with it. We are such a ridiculously slow army it's not even funny. (Or just allow us to march, but I don't see that happening.)

And I second Krael's thought of being allowed to take a single base of tomb swarms.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and its only possible now with such a huge online community but its not outside of the realm of possibility to modify the rules and attempt to introduce them back into the community. At the end of the day we are the hobby. If we boycott the current system and introduce our own balanced approach then there is no reason why it can't be accepted.

Firstly I've got no doubt it will fail due to firstly the difference in opinions, secondly having a set forum where people will agree and let's face it there are a lot of negative people out there and forums seem to attract. Prior to Warhammer Forge coming out with Chaos Dwarfs TO's were allowing a fan made book into tournaments, granted TK already have a written book but let's face it, it's just not that good and some subtle changes could really bring it up to par with other armies without making them ridiculous.

Just thinking out loud but god damn it would be good.

Thoughts?

Though about it a few time myself, what if we (or GW) could create erratas to current books to fix imbalance, after all there's no better play testing than thousands of players around the world to perfect the rules. That would be great. But a fan-made revision of a new book, I'm not sure it would fly. People that don't play Tomb Kings would probably don't even pay attention to that, wondering what are we talking about, and are already thinking our book is just fine.

If it was a possibility, then the big prolem would be to create one revision everyone is happy about. There's as many "fix" as there is players. Some people just want everything at once, and suggest ridiculous stuff that would make the book the number one powerhouse around.

Personally the first step would be to only adjust the points in the book. No need to changes rules or stats right now, with the right point cost some units might already work better than they are now.

I've been saying, if the community can cause ridiculous Comp like blanket bans on SCs and limits on PD generation, they can also enact community driven fixes for current armies.

We'd need to be careful not to overstretch our bounds. Err on the side of leaving us weaker, not stronger- use our power as the players to take the edge off some of the worst or badly phrased rules, not to add rules that primarily benefit us.


For example, the idea that the Necrosphinx has HKB on all it's attacks, or auto-hits its Decapitating strike- a bit too much. Perhaps simply have the Decap Strike hit on a set value, or at a higher Weapons Skill?

EBtS, yeah, it's weaker than ICFB, but it's not a bad rule. The chance of being destroyed or delayed is small enough that it's basically there to offset the sheer utility of being able to come up anywhere on the board, in any formation, with a number of dangerous units, only needing to worry about the board edge for Mishaps.

Construct Healing- 1 per spell, not phase. It's something that would help take the sting from the cost of our Constructs, while not being too powerful or too 'broken'.

I don't think our Characters need Healing. They're tougher than most Characters, with more Wounds; and we have the Blade of Antorhak to heal, along with Health Potions (which we can actually stay alive to use). Also, our Royals are able to do damage even on death. Maybe make the Curse a bit stronger, perhaps able to pick out individual models in a unit, maybe ignoring Armour, maybe counting as Magical attacks. Use that instead of Lore Attribute healing- meaning that enemies will regret or avoid targeting our characters more.

I think the rules that give us Regeneration (6) ought to be changed to Regen (5). a 5+ Ward that can be taken away by flaming attacks is plenty decent to make Necrotects much more worth taking, even by themselves (not to mention again reducing the 'pain' of Constructs), and reduces the hurt of the 'heirophant tax'.

Constructs, in addition to the modified Lore Attribute Healing above, ought to have the option to BUY better armour- or make the armour saves we have un-alterable, as the stone goes all the way down. (is that Scaly Skin?). So things that ignore armour will still bite through it, but basic Strength modifiers won't take it away.

The Howda Crew needs to be clarified as either Riders or not for purposes of MWbD from Settra. (Personally, I'm on the side of the Kitty gaining the MWbD- but that's something for playtesting to decide if it's broken or not)

Characters riding Chariots should simply pool the Wounds characteristic, and act in all other respects like normal Chariots.

Desert Wind either may Move units more than once a phase, or can 'heal' units in combat. Only one, though- both, and it's too good for its points- and no Charging using it. Not needed.


This last one (there's probably more, but we'll need to collect those outside things- maybe I'll work on a Doc FAQ style thing that can be passed around) is something that could be fixed, as has been said, by the addition of a single word in the main rulebook, and that's dealing with our Crumble- that units are Steadfast if they have more Rank Bonus than their enemy. Alternatively , the Nehekharan Undead rule talks about our soldier's Discipline, even after Death, and lets us take Rank Bonus above 3- or halves Crumble (or gives a 4+ Ward against, or something) when we're Steadfast.


But yes. We can change the community- all we need to do is agree, and put the rules out there- test them, show that they're balanced and fair to both us and to all other armies.

I agree Anvildude, if they can limit things at tournaments and even bring in rules packs like the ETC then surely something like this is possible.

Just need to get everyone on the same thought patterns is all and agreeing which will be the hard part.

Didn't a Dark Elves forum do something like that around 6th edition? Maybe I'm misremembering.

I completely agree. This shouldn't be seen as a power grab for TK players, just some tweaking to make the army more viable.

Of course they don't need healing, I just don't see why it would be overpowered for us to be able to heal them when a plethora of other armies can.

I'm ok with having to buy extra armor on things like Ushabti, Colossus, Stalkers, and Scorps. Honestly, though, I think the sphinxs should have a higher base armor save included in their current costs. Even just a 4+ would help a ton against massed low str attacks.

This is not something I had thought of before, but I agree wholeheartedly. A chariot should not be such a liability. Maybe we would see more lists with Kings if a chariot was a practical choice for him.

I agree, only one change is needed. And for what it's worth, my vote would be for more than one move per phase. It would make some of the scenarios a little more playable.

Just my thoughts. I'm sure others will have their opinions.