2600 - Death Starr ******, etc

since i started TK i am trying to create lists that would go with their different types of playstile...

this would be a full focus on the death star ...


TK
Blade of antharak, glittering scales, dragonbane gem, pot of speed

Herald, Armor of destiny, BSB, Halberd

Necrotect, Ironcurse Icon

Hierophant lvl 4, Golden death mask

priest, lvl 2, nehek lore, cloak of the dunes

priest, lvl 2, lore of death

20 archer

20 archer

4 chariots, Full command, banner of flame

5 horse archer

5 horse archer

20 Tomb Guard, banner of undying legion

warsphinx, fiery roar

Hirotitan

casket

= 2600 pts



ideas in this list:
all chars in TG, king and herald in front row, herald on the side king at his side, king takes pot to trigger regen in first round of combat,
the lvl 2 nehek goes for skullstorm and winds of the desert,... to pop out of the unit before i charge or i get charged and unleash the vortex.
the lvl 2 death goes for anything he gets and spiritleach (ld 10 )
necrotect has the icon for any flaming dwarf canons and similar stuff..


deployment:

TG mid, sphinx to the right with 1 unit of horsearchers.

chariots right with Titan

other horsarchers roam around...

archers behind sphinx and charoits/TG.



so i just "rush" forward. if i thin i'll will be charged i'll sent out the horsearchers to block the charge and redirect the overrun right into the sphinx.


i dindt have enough pts to put in any magicresistence ... that might be a problem.

and i figure ill get outnumberd a lot by some enemies but that shouldt bother me at all cause the most of them the death star wil hack and slash without any troubble...



coments?



i might try this list on saturday..

hi,
to begin with, how exactly do you hope to pop your l2 nehek wizard out of the unit by desert winds? a) you charge successfully, next comes magic phase, you het desert winds... wizard though can't go anywhere (besides, even the spell states it afflicts unengaged units, so the TG unit would be excluded anyway)
you get charged... your nehek wizard will have to survive a round of combat before hoping to reach another of your nagic phases... doable, but risky...

Another point... You want to create a deathstar. Well besides putting on doubt the usefulness of such a strategy, where exactly is that deathstar? 20 TG are not nearly enough... I once got charged by warriors of chaos with halberds in a 5x5 formation... they took out about 15 TG per round (and they hit first because of better Ini) So you are left now with 5 TG... what do you do? Rezz them with banner? good luck, but I think you need more. Even if you equip your chars with best defensive stuff, I would simply anihilate the unit and get at the chars through comat resolution. Another thing in that formation: you have two chars in front sides, 3 chars behind (if I got that right). Of the TG you have 3 in front with champ, 2 in second row... That's 6 attacks from the TG left... I can't imagine that would be enough to get at anything... How do you plan to get enough combat resolution? The characters? 2 of them are mages that won't do a lot and 4 are not affected by MWBD... So the king and herald... Sorry, but IMO I don't see this working... For a TG deathstar I would take a horde formation of about 35-40 to start...

hm,..

1. the lvl 2 wizard will ofc leave the unit before i get scharged or charge by myself.

so while approaching.. so tu say in the turn bevor the charges will "happen". the desert wind is for his secong move. so he leave in the movement phase 10" out of the unit, then positions himself in the perfect position with desert wind. again 10". that gives him a radius of 20" to play with and max mobility. he's a kamikazee,.. so hell die a lot i think

2. well i try to make the list etc turnament playable.. so the max number for the tg would teoretically be about 27 guys.. i had to make them less for the points in the character.

well,.. in cc with this unit a lot of enemies (who arn't imune to psy) have to test for terror/fear, on their own leadership without reroll..
so 1. possibility of makeing a nice fail..
with herald and king blocking 1 side at least 1/5 of the attacks have to go against the characters,.. and they are very tanky and hard to hit/kill in 1 round.
- the whole unit has regen 6. also can save 1-2 guys
- dont forget the unit itself is 26 models "big", or 25 with the flying priest outside of it. .. so its 5 ranks.

so even if some1 kills 2 ranks of in 1 round i still have 3 ranks, banner+bsb for combat rez and i will ofc also make some wounds on my own...

the weak thing that u did point out correctly is that most of the second row supportattacks are a lot weaker than they would be if made by normal TG with ws 6 and halberds... so i have 3 weaker attacks for haveing terror, deathmask boubble, hate, and charkilling... sould be a fair trade..

hmmm, you say 1/5th of the other's attacks will go on your characters... how do you want to deploy them, then?

TK H TG TG TG

or

TK TG TG TG H
?

in version 1, I'd say you can draw that 1/5th on your characters, in second version it wouldn't work.

Just to be clear, try it out by all means, but there are some very good reasons why I doubt this unit will do much...

For instance, you pack a TK and a Necrotect in it... The TK's role is to provide MWBD, so that your Tomb Guard hit better, as well as the Necrotect does with his hatred... That's a lot of points you put in a unit to make them a fighting unit. Then you go and draw away possible attacks from your TG by putting more wizards in them. That's like bulking up a unit to become an actual warrior and then putting him 2 big shields into his hands to fight with. Ultimately your unit will work as a shield for wizards and nothing much else imo.

The second thing I would like to point out, is that death mage... LD10 from King to go sniping characters. It can work, it is done, I have done it (though in my case not with a lot of success, so I am probably biased)... But you only take one death mage. Your setup says I make a fighting unit into a shield for my mages who are supposed to do damage by spells, but then... the only mages able to do damage will be a L2 nehek with skullstorm (risky and difficult to get off at times) and a L1 death mage... Ultimately, the only mage able to do spell damage will be the death mage... so...

You are making a unit that throws about too many ideas at the same time, and by doing that, you will be able to do none effectively, I am afraid.

TK and Necrotect - make unit fighty, but then... too few attacks from TG due to setup
TK & death priest to leech spirit--- alright, but you will pull it off with exactly one spell once (unless the opponent blocks it simply off everytime you try it) ... My feeling is, if you try that, take 3 of them...
How many TG to take? Regeneration +6 is good, of course, but good enough to make you only lose about 10 guys in one round of combat? Combat resolution included? If you want to really minimize the incoming wounds, I would take a light mage for Pha's protection (that does wonders imo) What is your plan with the unit once combat has been engaged? How do you think you can win any fight with defensively equipped characters and only a handful of TG attacks? (alright, your Hierophant could get off that -3 Str & Toughness spell, but we know that is a huge bet...)

One last thing to consider: you will not exactly make a deathstar that can take it up with any foe out there and walk unhindered through it. Because of that, you will have a unit that will cost about 300 pts for your TG (no halberds, I guess to keep them defensive?) a king (about 250 - 300 pts), a herald (about 115 pts), a Necrotect (60 pts), a L1 deathpriest (70 pts) a L2 nehekharan (105 without items), a L4 nehekharan (210 pts without items)... That makes a total of above a thousand points... I would either send everything I've got at that unit because it seems far more frail than a deathstar should be or simply ignore it and block your 10LD spirit-leech and desert wind to strand you with a Movement of 4 inches per turn... maybe throw some redirectors at you and kill off the rest.

I hope I don't sound too defeatist (or even patronizing, which is not my intention). I just want to point out some weaknesses of your plan I feel... But as I said, try it out by all means. I do that myself a lot to get a feel for how situations can play out or what direction some fights can go.

no, no, no.. not at all. - that to the "I hope I don't sound too defeatist..." part

i really appreciate this kind of awnser!

u took time to think and write and explain! and thx for that!

that is exactlly what i need and what i am very thankfull for!

im very new to fantasy (2-3 months - playd about 10 games) and TG is my frist and olny army...
and as a 40k player i need to get a totally different thought process at plaing games and at making lists, makeing ideas happen in the lists and in the games...


so lets try to talk this through a bit more.


the deployment in the unit would go:

H TK TG TG TG

so maximum of 2 models can attack the H and 1 of them has to attack either him or the king. the same for supporting attacks.

some mistakes i made and u took over from me in your argumentation:
the TG have Halberds. forgot to write it, cause i think they have to have them always.
the deathpriset is lvl 2, so he will have spirit leech and 1 random helpfull spell. with 2 dice to throw he cant get a "######ty" spellcombo. anything he'll get he might use to be usefull and to combine well with the rest.


yeah, i did that unit in the end, with the "great idea" that there are really a lot of possibilities for them to "sinergize"... i even wanten some1 to have a megic resit item to give the whole unit magic resist 2 or even 3,.. but there are not enough points for that..

i had my first few games with a similar idea and equipped tg unit,.. just not that "extreme" and i masacrd 2 skaven, got a ok victory and lost 2 games mostly to my really really n00bisch deploment and positioning "skills" even bevore the games started... (i know that now... hehe)


to the magic stuff i made the experience by now that if the opponent has it clear and simple what spell u need most ur magic is almost useless if u dont roll a risky irresitibl or a great roll for windof magic, hab+ve 3 dice from the casket and channel 1...

so this setup would make it very very hard for the opponent to figure out what to dispel. ... i i hav 2 wind of the desert to try for the movement and for cheap healing. the casket for either killing or luring some extra DD out of him.. and then also a cheap spirit leech to again force him to either dispell it or let it through a hope for a good role...
with that much options the opponent might just have to letme have a +1 attack bubble or even the vortex, or any important hexing and so on... so i have a lot of cheap but dangerous spells to offer, especially in a combination... and the enemie will have to make the dispels really count...

well as i said and u stated to me,.. that might sound great in theory, and maybe even on paper,.. but it might suck at a real game.. anyhow,.. as it beeing a "great idea" of mine i'll certainly have to try it very soon

Actually 33 halbard TG + Standard + champion = 449pt
or 39 Sword and Board TG + Standard + champion = 449pt

Both formations legal under ETC restrictions. Your points for characters do not come off the total restriction for the unit.

I would never run TG less than 40 models (inc characters)

well yeah thats without a magic banner... max number with banner of undying legion is 27 i think.

as far as i know 1 can olny clain +3 for cr for ranks,.. and since we raise our fallen back to life and dont need numbers/ranks for steadfast, LD boost or something similar id rather count on using that speciality to its most with saving the points for the TG in row 5+ and buying magic, which brings d3+1 back on any spell. ... ofc even on a 1 1 on winds of magic or a 1 6 u must get of at least 1 augment and get some of them back... and the banner is there too.

:-) I hope your plans work out. Maybe write a juicy battlereport ;-)

As to halberts on TG, by no means a must, both setups are viable... indeed, with sword abd board you would not be relying on the regen save from your hierophant and could keep him in a bunker outside that unit.

Also, another thing to avoid at all costs is getting flanked, that would be devastating, I think...

I wish you luck.

The problem with the "deathstar" style combined with the ETC comp is the points cap at 450. You really want to be running 40 TG minimum 10x4

As Amonakhom said:
or 39 Sword and Board TG + Standard + champion = 449pt
And: Your points for characters do not come off the total restriction for the unit. (since they join the unit during deployment!)

So you can take 39 TG, a standard and a champion... (I'd be temped to get a musician in there for the draw too) then add your Tomb King and Herald BSB in there too. Give the HERALD the Banner of undying legion and your TG guys are still 39 strong with the nice healing bound spell at 449 points.

hm,.. i think u guys are right,.. but i just dont see it,..

but, i will try it shurel,.. mayb the game after this 1