[Spector]

Written by: willadams33

The Casket of Souls – Pandora’s Box


Overview –

The Casket of Souls is perhaps the most interesting and potentially devastating option certainty for a Khemrian character to take and in a broader sense for a Tomb Kings army in general. You may take one per army, no matter what the size, and it is a hefty investment and will take up one of your rare slots (more on this latter) and follows all the rules for war machines. The Casket is better suited to a more defensive style of play and army construction, where it can have the maximum amount of turn before your units enter combat and block your opponents line of sight to the casket.

Strengths –

- Always casts on a value of 2D6. The Casket of Souls, like all Khemrian magic always casts and therefore will never miscast. This means that your opponent is either going to have to let it go, or save dispel dice and scrolls in order to counter it. This is perhaps the single most useful thing about the casket. I have played games where it has been as useful as I could have ever wished it to be when it has not even successfully gone off at all. The Casket is an absolute sucker for dispel dice. If dice and scrolls are being saved and used by your opponent to counter the casket, it means that you more game-making incantations such as summoning and especially urgency, giving you that all important charge, have less chance of being dispelled.

-Effects everything that can see it. Now let us assume that the casket does successfully go off. It is an item with the potential to effect every unit in the opponents army (providing they are all looking at the casket) This is a power like no other in Warhammer, and is why the casket is so rightly feared. The casket will affect any enemy that can see it, even if they are immune to psychology or unbreakable. Even high Ld armies will take some casualties against the casket. With 2d6+2 –Ld wounds per unit with no saves allowed, even knights with a 1+ save should be quaking in their saddles.

Causes your opponent to cast at -1 modifier. As well as sucking up dispel dice and scrolls, the Casket causes the opponent to subtract one from all of his casting roles. This is great for forcing that extra power dice to be used for mid- level spells. However, the power really comes into its own against Ogres, making an Ogre player have to use two dice to be confident of getting a gut magic spell through, helping to control what otherwise can be a very nasty magic phase.

Causes Terror. This is a great self protection mechanism. Against the Fast Cavalry and skirmishers who will normally come after the Casket, it will make perhaps half of them run in terror instead of charge. It is also great if you are deploying your Casket next to a Catapult on an elevated position, giving the stone thrower some extra protection afforded by the six inch range of terror.
? Vs. Normal Shooting. As a model, the Casket is extremely resilient against non-template weapons of all types. The Casket itself cannot be harmed, so when randomising, two-thirds of the shots are discounted. Any shots hitting crew members are then randomised again, hitting the guard on a 1-4 and the Priest on a 5-6. This means that on average only 1 in 9 shots that hit will hit the Liche Priest, keeping him pretty safe.


Weaknesses –

-Cannon balls and other template weapons. Here is the caskets greatest problem. Due to Games Workshop thinking that it is okay to make cannons snipers when firing at war machines, the liche priest can be picked out if the cannon guess is accurate. There are very few ways round this, other than hiding the Casket from the cannons (thus vastly reducing its effectivness, or investing in a Ward Save which may be better served on another character (more on this later). If a cannon or template hits the priest he cannot get away from it. A measly T3 with two wounds, he will not be around for long. On the bright side, cannons are only available to two armies, Dwarfs and empire, with stone throwers available to Dwarfs, Empire, Bretonnian, Orcs and Goblins, Ogres and Tomb Kings. Though I feel that their accuracy is much less reliable and they are not best suited to targeting war machines.

-Points cost. A casket and a tooled up Liche Priest come in on the wrong side of 300 points, so sizeable investment. After hearing a few horror stories about the caskets capabilities, your opponent is bound to try to get rid of it, and those victory points.

-Stationary. The casket cannot move. This means that deployment (more on this later) is vitally important. It is also a weakness because unless you are playing with a very defensive army, soon your Casket Priest’s incantations will be out of range. Stationary also means it has no way to get out of the way if, for instance, it is ambushed by a herd of Chaos Beastmen.

The Two Catapults Problem. Competition is a good headache to have I suppose. The Casket is up against one of the best and most points efficient war machines in the games, the Screaming Skulls Catapult. For some 55pts cheaper than the Casket alone, let alone the priest on top, you can have a fully fledged panic-causing machine. The Catapult is the only thing available to Tomb Kings to get rid of things like Treemen and Steam Tanks at range, in fact it is about the only thing that can get rid of a Steam Tank full stop! So to this end, is it worth it? It gives your huge magical power and the ability to affect the whole enemy army, always works, and is devastating against magic-light and low Ld armies. At the end it is a personal choice, I just like the threat and variety that the Casket brings to battle.


Deployment & Tactics-

As has been noted, the Casket cannot move, this means its initial deployment is paramount to the caskets success and role in the battle. Normally, I deploy the Casket in one of two ways: Defensive and Offensive. The safer defensive option is to deploy it on an elevated position along with the mandatory Screaming Skulls Catapult. This serves several purposes. It offers the Casket a decent view of the whole battlefield; it gives the catapult some extra protection afforded by the six inch range of terror; it means that your Casket Priest’s incantation is never wasted as he can simply be on smiting duty with the catapult. The drawback to this deployment is that it leaves over 400 points of your army in a very small, unmovable area. More annoyingly, most hills tend to be in corners, meaning that it is fairly easy for your opponent to deploy and move his army to insure as few of his units as possible can draw line of sight to the Casket. The Second more aggressive way to deploy the casket is right slap bang in the middle of your battle line. Yes this means that it is right on show and not tucked away safe in a corner, but it means that to get to your army, the enemy will have to look pretty much straight at it! This is great, because your enemy will have to deal with it, either in using a lot of shooting to kill the Liche Priest, or by using up dispel dice and scrolls. This more aggressive style of deployment is better suited against combat armies like Chaos, Bretonnia and O&G, as to win the game, these armies will have to meet your battle line which can stay relatively still for the first few turns, meaning that you aren’t blocking line of sight to the Casket.