Non-conventional Tactics For Tomb Kings., Using rules for fun and profit

I thought I'd discuss some non-conventional tactics.

Horse Archers. Never mind deploying against the enemy in their field, horse archers can be good as anti-scout units on your side. The rules for scouts say you can't charge if you deploy anywhere on the battlefield more than 12" away from the enemy. However, if you choose to deploy in your deployment zone, you can be both within 12" and be able to charge. In short, you can easily get the flank on the opponent if you go first. Don't bother trying for the rear, you are likely to bleed wounds.

5 or 6 Skeletal Horsemen with Musician. The conventional wisdom is to vanguard these guys out to their doom! However, there are very good reasons to simply keep them behind your lines as countermeasures. Barring template weapons, and even then..., sometimes it is preferably to send your Hierophant on foot into that unit. Specifically, it will immunize you from the Dreaded 13th since the unit is Cavalry. Furthermore, shooting is allocated against rank and file unless there are at least 6 hits since you can allocate against rank and file first.

Blocking LOS. There are a handful of items in the game that will decimate the Hierophant but require LOS. The Cupped Hands is the worst. Third Eye of Tzeentch is also annoying. Carrion and War Sphinx easily block line of sight. Actively screening your characters can easily surprise your opponents who take LOS for granted.

The virtue of 7 wide archers for Volley Fire. If your units of archers are 20, I find 7 to be the best formation. At 7 wide, you don't take up as much space as 10 wide, which can constrain deployment space. Also, if you don't move, volley fire gives you 18 shots, with a loss of 2 shots. That's not a terrible loss of efficiency. This may be critical if your army does not have a BSB. A swift reform from 5 to 10 or anything to 10 could confound your plans. That's why 7 may be the best compromise in risk taking.

Diversify. If you have multiple high leadership characters, you might as well divide the Hierophant and General duties. I currently use two HLP. Rather than name my Lvl 4 as the Hierophant and General, I delegated the General duty to my Lvl 3 death wizard. He died on turn 1 going into the warp but the rest of my army was reasonably intact. Conversely, had my HLP gone into the warp, at least I would have LD8 going around. Opponents would have to decide between 100 points for the general or shoot for the army crumbling - most likely the latter.

The key to me is to overwhelm your opponent with choices. Death stars are straightforward. That's the biggest points and threat. However, Tomb Kings I believe thrive on giving your opponent lots of choices and giving them the opportunity to choose poorly. At the same time, choices for you also mean options for you. If you had a cannon and your opponent presented the opportunity to hit one target, what would it be? The Hierophant in one unit, the general in another, the BSB standing by himself around the troops, War Sphinx, Hierotitan and a Casket (all of which are within 12" of each other). Your opponent is going to have to consciously decide where his priorities are.

How do you win big with the cannon shot without making it impossible to happen?

For me, the win big answer is not to shoot the Hierophant, Hierotitan, or War Sphinx, it is to shoot the casket, hope to wound and blow it up, coupled with its death taking the BSB with him. The odds of killing a Hierotitan or War Sphinx (assuming you hit) is 5/18 (5/6 to wound, 1/3 to score 5 wounds). The odds of killing a casket is 1/3 (1/2 wound, 2/3 dead). The BSB would take an expected 1.45 wounds as a result. Killing the Hierophant is remote due to LOS and regen (about 8%). Hopefully you reached the same conclusion as well.

there are some interesting ideas here, I will certainly try out the 7 wide archers :-)

I like your thinking!

Heres a thought... Conga line archers! you get half of the rank to attack rounded up, so they should all be able to attack with hardly any deployment front taken. Now this would probably only work for a unit of 10, but still. I guess you could add a champion to a unit like that too to put a character in the 2nd rank

I _love_ the way you are thinking, but I had to disagree a bit with this one.

Using models to block LoS is almost impossible. All it takes is for a laser light to go between legs or under a craned neck, or whatever. Both your examples are of models that are very back at blocking LoS.

Still, keep up the innovative thinking!

I _love_ the way you are thinking, but I had to disagree a bit with this one.

Using models to block LoS is almost impossible. All it takes is for a laser light to go between legs or under a craned neck, or whatever. Both your examples are of models that are very back at blocking LoS.

Still, keep up the innovative thinking!

I'd like for you to prove me wrong. Shooting a line from the enemies eyes to the other character is not as easy as it sounds. Those carrion wings are huge and given that they skirmish, they easily overlap each other.

The war sphinx likewise is very hard to see through. The howdah on top makes it hard to see over. As for seeing under, the base is 2 inches and you have an inch apart. You need to see through three inches at a downward angle. From a certain distance, I don't think it's possible.

If all else fails, model some tall grass!

I don't believe Carrion Skirmish o.o; do they? Never the less the wings on these models often overlap (depends on your modeling).

Something for everyone to keep in mind:

"Sometimes, all that will be visible of a model is a weapon, banner or other ornament he is carrying. In these cases, the model is not visible. Similarly, we ignore wings and tails, even though they are technically part of a model's body. These rules are intended to ensure that models don't get penalized for having impressive banners, swords, and so on."
Main Rulebook>General Principles>Line of Sight


Granted you cannot target 'through' the items and appendages listed but you also can not target 'to' them.

They're fliers - they Skirmish by default.

"Whether they fly or move on the ground, all flyers have the Swiftstride special rule (see page 76). In addition, because of their loose fighting style, flying units consisting of more than one model have the Skirmishers special rule (see page 77)."
Main Rulebook>Special Rules>Fly

Nice.. I've been playing them wrong. That helps a great deal thanks.

The next topic I'd like to discuss is pre-set battlefield deployments.

There are several formations in theory:
Centerline. Your army is straight in the middle.
Refused Flank. You basically weight your heavy hitters on one side and try to sweep.
Castle. You take a corner and force your opponent to come to you.

Tomb Kings I feel are best designed to employ Centerline and Castle formations. Refused flank is difficult due to our inability to march. Those are generally better suited for Brettonians or monster driven armies.

I don't need to talk about Castle, which is self explanatory. Today, we talk about Centerline strategies against combat oriented armies. While these are generally pre-set strategies, there's no reason why you can't employ them. In chess, you have many openings (weak sicilian, strong sicilian, etc.). There's no reason not to use a pre-set strategy from the onset.

In WHFB, we essentially have ranks (to tie up the army) and flanks (to negate their ranks for total victory). Unfortunately, Tomb Kings doesn't always quite do that. The hard center soft flanks doesn't work for us. We should instead consider a semi-soft center and hard flanks, hoping to cause horrific damage on the charge.

My army generally speaking. 2 War Sphinx, 3 Chariots, 3 Necropolis Knights, Catapults, 1/2 SSC, 2 units of 20 archers, 5 Skeletal Horsemen, Hierotitan, BSB. Other than the BSB, most of this is fairly common or easily substituted (War Sphinx versus Necrosphinx). The skeletal horsemen are a little rare but they do show up every so often.

A Centerline army cannot be too long. Your units need to be within 12 inches of the center and definitely within 12" of the hierophant. Otherwise you cannot get to the other side in time. This is why I am not in favor of 10 wide archers on deployment.

So who goes in the middle? The Hierotitan. He is the centerline. He's important for magic early but not that important once in combat. Flanking him is either 1 War Sphinx or the Skeletal Horsemen. Besides them are the archers 7 wide. Flanking them are your hard flanks of monsters, monstrous cavalry, or big chariots. Swiftstride should be on the flanks as the most maneuverable units. Why not the biggest guys in the middle? You can have one but preferably not two. The key is to envelop. A straight on fight is risky because they could maul you badly with lots of 6s. Furthermore, if you don't have hard flanks, you will get flanked yourself. That's why the Hierotitan is semi-hard yet expendable.

Behind your archer, Hierotitan, Unit #2, archer unit goes the war machines. Casket goes behind archers and Catapults behind Titans. Your characters are either in the archers or perhaps Skeletal Horsemen deployed behind the archers.

The strategy is to let your archers fall back and your hammers move slightly forward. You don't want to invite the charge but you want to threaten the charge. Hierotitans and War Sphinx are decent given that they have high toughness, which means the opponent can easily get locked down for a flanking maneuver. The opponent of course should realize that if the Hierotitan holds, they are getting smashed. The titan would at best be good for 1 or 2 wounds and then they eat T8. This forces them to make the tough decisions which may be good for you.

Remember the archers? At 7 wide, you save 2 1/2 inches from being 10 wide, which is 2 1/2 inches less of maneuvering for your flanks. After advancing your flanks and Hierotitan, you can legally reform 10 wide and back up 2 inches. You'll have space as the large targets move 6 and clear space for you. If you don't maneuver, you still get your 18 volley shots. By deploying off center, you also allow one of the archer units to back up further than the other due to the large SSC base. If the archers have to fight, you want them at least 5 inches behind the starting point to force longer charges.

The horsemen are there as late game sacrifices. Moving 8, they can block the next unit and force them to overrun or risk taking flanks. Carrion can do similar things as well. If you have mounted characters, they of course would disengage and run to the archers or out by themselves. This adds to the confusion on the battlefield for your opponent and having to make tough choices on what to do next.

Anyway, the poor visuals give you an idea of the line of attack.

The key is that everything needs to also be slightly off center behind the center line. That way overruns through the army don't result in hitting another unit. So they kill your 140 point archer unit? Big deal. You have to be willing to lose your archers and war machines as needed and let them hit the backfield if they roll well. If they don't, they are set up to take horrific attacks in their flanks.

Granted, things can always go wrong (i.e., they don't come in, units blow up, etc.) but without a plan, you are asking for trouble.

Ive toyed with the same idea as your centerline strategy, but with one wrinkle. On the flanks, you want to have your big blocks of skeletons, and all of your center units are your chariot base units.

I refer to this as playing "inside out"

the argument here is: Sure your units are slow, but being far out on the flanks, and being slow means they are getting there on turn 4 or 5, and that's exactly when big blocks of unit shine. You've had a chance to whittle down the center, all sorts of collateral damage has happened. Dead or dying stuff all over the place, and now here come these big busses of 40 skeletons, late to the party, but they are in combat on flanks, winning, and breakign their opponent most of the time.

2 units of 40 on each flank is 700 ish points, to be true, but it creates a fantastic "damned if you do, damned if you don't." type of scenario.

I've written about this on my blog roughly a week ago.

http://hammyfix.wordpress.com/

a refuse flank can be set up by deploying simultaneously a casket and a catapult. right away. the dascet goes where you will need it, probably behind a building or something. the cataput, however, goes to somewhere halfway the 'false flank'. next drop will be a cheap 10 archer thing or so. maybe another one. it is not an investment, but musician archers will be able to deal with any light cav/gutterrunner threat send after the cataput. also, it will look like you are setting up shop in that corner. I feel the opponent will recognize he will have to send recources that way, mre that just 5 wolf riders, and thereby you will scatter his force.

you can further deceive the opponent with more obvious drops. some archers could g in front of your casket as well, and you can deploy your pivotal centre block without giving anything away as well.
af ther that you will simply put the charriots, knights and other fast guys to the side of the pivotal block the catapult isn't on.
a necrosphinx might just be fast enough to put some more weight at the cataput-side, which will be mobile ennough to join the sweeping forces.

Should have made a picture probably.

This thread needs more pictures for examples and a list of the units.

The inside out approach seems like a slow flank attack. It also contemplates skeleton warriors. You may need Desert Wind in order to pull this maneuver off. On a Desert Wind based army, it has lots of potential. You can always advance the chariots up, threatening a charge, and then back up 4" per turn.

For me, 10 archers has never been able to drive off scouts/gutter runners effectively. Even 2 of them could wipe out my war machines. That said, refused flank could be a very good strategy for meeting engagement.

The centerline approach is primarily for pitched battle.

pg 10 of the warhammer BRB.

"For one model to have line of sight to another, you must be able to trace an unblocked line from its eyes to any part of the body (ie the head torso arms or legs) of the target.

Sometimes, all that will be visible of a model is a weapon, banner, or other ornament he is carrying. In these cases, the model is not visible. Similarly, we ignore wings and tails even though they are technically part of a model's body. These rules are intended to ensure that models don't get penalised for having impressive banners swords and so on."

This has always bothered me that you can use a models wings to block LOS to another of your figs, but your opponent cant then shoot the model when he can only see its wings. This happened to me in a game many months ago. My opponent set up a dragon behind a building with the righ wing sticking out from cover. he then positioned his caster behind the wing so i couldn't shoot him. This was before our new book came out but after 8th was released.

I know it doesn't come up often but It irks me.

I don't think of this as abuse, it sounds "legally" clever. He is, after all, blocking a lot of his wizard's line of sight too.

I don't think of this as abuse, it sounds "legally" clever. He is, after all, blocking a lot of his wizard's line of sight too.

Very much abuse IMO. Couldn't shoot either model even though there was a giant wingin plain sight and direct damage spells don't need line of sight (dwellers) so he was able to do a lot of damage. I just found it pretty cheesy. I complimented him on the tactic. I just think the rules
Should be reworked in this matter

Something Interesting I have found:

A unit of 7 Chariots (or 6 with a Character on Chariot) deployed with a rank of 4 in front, and 3 in back, get the sweetness of 4D6 Impact hits, as well as the nice +1S from the Rank Bonus.

I see a lot of units of 4 or 6 Chariots, taking either extra impact hits, or higher strength ones, but never both.

I was thinking about something even more rude the other day: 9 chariots with 6 in the front rank. 6D6 S5 impact hits! 60 attacks if smited! Booyah!

Problem with that chariot tactic is that if you lose just one chariot, you lose your impact hits S5 and rank bonus. Any savvy opponent will easily see this and use minimal shooting to cripple this unit, so youre best off filling up your ranks.

That's why I use two units of 6. 6D6 Impacts and most likely at least one will be giving S5, + 60 attacks.

Then you raise it back after the charge (and stand and shoot).

Then you raise it back after the charge (and stand and shoot).

Agreed.

Although losing one chariot would not lose you an Impact hit as the chariot is taken from the back rank, you just lose the strength bonus. Resurecting that same lost model, however, -will- gain back the strength bonus of your Impact hits if it compleates an extra rank.

Yeah sorry that was a typeo, i meant -1 to the stregnth of the impact hits. It is a good tactic to heal the chariots in the magic phase that you chage, but its still unreliable.

In my opinion, the TK army is all about unconventional tactics. People who have suffered and lost the most with this book have been using the same tactics that other armies use.

Agreed...