1000pts list in need of criticism

[Orthanus]

This is the 1000pts version of my 2k list that I am currently improving before I post it, please be as cruel and picky as possible:

Heros:

Tomb Prince - 129
Great Weapon
Collar of Shapesh

Liche Priest - 135
Cloak of Dunes

Liche Priest - 115

Core:

22x Skeletal Bowmen - 176

Tomb Swarm - 45

Special:

4x Chariots - 205
Banner of Undying Legion

Tomb Scorpion - 85

Rare:

Screaming Skull Catapult - 110
Skulls of the Foe

GRAND TOTAL: 1000pts



Plans:

Tomb Prince: Will join the SSC and use righteous smiting until the enemy draw close to the archers at which point he will join them. Depending on the magical defence of the opposition he may even stay in the archer unit and righteous smiting them.

Liche Priest 1: Hierophant. Stay hidden from view of enemies and fly away if ever danger arises. Use smiting on archers or SSC depending on type of threat.

Liche Priest 2: This unit will sit in the archers till danger comes then will hide behind them. Use smiting on archers or SSC depending on type of threat. will use SoR to slaughter weaker troops.

Skeletal Bowmen 1: This unit will blast away oncoming enemies and has a musician just for a cheap boost in combat.

Chariots: The unit will either close down an enemies flank if they are ranged orientated or will charge the flank of enemies attacking the archers. With the BoUL they can bleed enemy dispel dice and attack harder targets.

Tomb Scorpions: Basic role. Appear and kill. This will hopefully slow down enemy advance by putting the marker pretty much in the middle.

Screaming Skull Catapult: Sit at the back and blast them. Will hit heavy-duty enemies first followed by big clusters.

[outbreak]

Not a bad list pretty standard, i'd personally prefer a small unit of light cav over the 10 archers and a mounted priest with ravening to ride in their for mobility/baiting/protection but you list would work fine too.

[Vallah]

I heartily agree with everything Outbreak said.

A nice alternative for you to consider though:

Were you to drop SoRav, SotF and an archer or two you could find the points to include another scorpion or a unit of carrion. Since SoRav and SotF are not really critical I suspect this change could be well worth the effort to tinker with a little.

[Phoenix]

The above make good points. SoRav is nice, but the Priest could ideally use a Horse with it.

A few drops and you could net yourself a rather nice unit of Chariots too, a great TK unit, so may as well take advantage of them. And filling non-core slots is always good.

Out of interest, did you check out my beginners guide? (list just looks familiar tis all, then again, its hard to et variation at 1K)

[tombkingmarkj]

Couple of thoughts:

SoR is not essential and with an 18" range for 45 pts its not great. Especially since you'll want to keep priests at a distance (well I do anyway).

Tomb Scorpions are great, but their primary function is war machine killer. At 1000 pts you're likely to come across one war machine or none. Would you consider replacing the scorpion with a unit of carrion? Carrion, while not as good of a unit as the scorpion, are capable of the same role at this level of points and can play the additional role of march blockers.

I'm a little confused about the musician in the skeleton unit. Why put a musician and not a standard? Musicians are less valuable to us than other races, since we don't flee: their only difference is if combat is drawn, so surely a standard would be of more value to the unit which will likely be the centre of your battle line.

Hope you find this helpful. Let us know of any changes you make!

All the best

Mark

[outbreak]

I find at 1k scorpions do MUCH more then just hunt warmachines. My guy takes out fast cav, lone characters (seem to have afew opponoents who run them on their own in 1k) or just suicide charging into a unit and directing my attacks against a character. Usually kills off some very important things or holds up units who struggle to hurt him if their non elites.
The muscian has also saved my ass many times. In a drawn combat it saves me 8pts from a skele dying and costs less then that.

[tombkingmarkj]

Lone characters? You're very lucky in your opponents by the sounds of things. I suppose you're right about the suicide character runs though. Perhaps its the woodelf player in me, always slowing my opponents down.

Musicians can of course win you a combat, but why take a musician and not a standard? The musician is only of use if the combat is otherwise drawn. The standard is always useful and it only costs 5pts more.

[Vallah]

Well appart from the increased cost of actually putting a banner on them in the first place (and there are never enough points for everything @1k), there is the very real possibility that they might actually surrender the banner in combat. 100pts for a captured banner may not seem like a lot but it represents a huge swing in terms if victory conditions in such a small battle. I'm not suggesting that banners aren't worth it at 1k (far from it), but it is a consideration and worth thinking about carefully when you're looking to cut a few points.

Despite all that though, I would always take the BotUL somewhere -especially @ 1k- because it will almost always pay for itself even if you do eventually lose it. With less models on the field to resurrect and with less dispel dice floating around to stop it, BotUL is usually a no brainer IMHO.

Tomb scorpions are undercosted at the best of times. At 1k they are even more valuable because the units faced will generally be smaller and have less combat res (always a bane of the scorp), and because there are no lord level characters in play. This is significant because it means the scorpion will often have -more or less- one of the best stat lines on the field and will be more than a match for any of the hero level characters you might like to assassinate.

Assassination is arguably the best use for a scorpion at any time, but again, the impact of the scorp is magnified here due to the lower point limit of the game. Remember your opponent will only have (at the absoloute most) say three mages, so if you nobble one with a scorpion then you instantly reduce his magic by a full third. Against many armies you will cut their magic in half, and at that point we enjoy a huge advantage.

Even if you don't use scorps to assassinate they will have a lot more potential targets to choose from @1k because the ratio of core to non core troops naturally tends to be much higher. My scorps are rather fond of nibbling on enemy archers but you're probably spoilt for choice here

[Orthanus]

Ok I am back online after connection problems and would like to return some points:

1) Thankyou all for your responses before I forget
2) I took the SoR to increase magical dominance, however I very much take your point and will probably cut it (see below)
3) Having cut the SoR I will not be taking the horsemen, though I see what you were getting at mate. I must say I don't get light horsemen: they aren't fast enough to be effective fast cavalry and cannot flee.
4) Tomb Scorpions are waaaaay more than anti-warmachine unit. Killing blow, poisoning high strength attacks. I use them to butcher weaker characters in units (eg mages), 10 man missile squads, small 6 man h.cavalry units, and as support for other units in combat (this is where the 14" charge helps)
5) Skulls of the Foe increases the chance of fleeing by 1/6. This means a Ld 7 unit has a 2/3 chance of fleeing if it takes a wound. To be honest I think this is well worth it, worth more than say 24pts worth of skeletons which over 2 turns will get 2 hits, 1 wound and then 0.5 kills (ish)
6) BoUL cannot really be taken in 1k pts because it cannot be taken on skeletons because no TK, TG are too expensive and affording magic standards and standard bearers on chariots is very hard.


Ok I am thinking of swapping the 2nd archer unit with a Tomb Swarm, SoR and x- amount of extra slimming to replacing them with one of the following:

4x Carrion - 96 : This unit would charge warmachines if there are any and take out ranged units, possibly sacrificing the second catapult shot for the ever-hilarious 1st turn charge.

Tomb Scorpion - 85: This would be a second Tomb Scorpion for more 'peek-a-boo slice-n-dice" hilarity.

3x Tomb Swarm -90: This would upgrade the current Tomb Swarm unit and would target lightly armoured units, esp high toughness ones.

Standard Bearer in Chariots - 85: This would boost the chariot unit to 4 chariots and the standard bearer would have either Banner of Cursing Word because the size of the base causes 4 ld test or the Banner of Undying Legion for the additional bound spell and healing.




Thanks again, any ideas?

[Vallah]

Originally Posted by Orthanus

I must say I don't get light horsemen: they aren't fast enough to be effective fast cavalry and cannot flee.

*Nods* You're certainly not alone there bud, a lot of people don't really 'get' the value of light cav because they're one of those units that just don't work the way they're supposed to.

There is a parallel here between say, the casket of souls and the light cav. At first you could be forgiven for thinking the casket is crap because the light of death rarely goes off and does little in the way of damage because it always seems to get dispelled. It's not until someone actually explains that this is the whole point of the casket (not to cause damage but to to eat up dispel dice) that the casket's real value becomes apparent...

Same kinda deal with light cav. If you think of them as meelee damage dealers you're always gonna be dissappointed with them, but their true worth comes in the fact that they are very cheap, very flexible units whos primary purpose is to die for the cause. They are the redirection units of choice and will allow you come out on top in those (all too frequent) 'whoever gets the charge off here will win this combat' situations. Many games are decided by this one factor alone and yet many people don't realise that simply by 'wasting' those 70pts worth of light cav here that they can pretty much guarantee that they are always the one who gets the critical charge off when it matters. I guess it's just one of those 'tricks' we actually need to see done before the penny drops for us?

On a final note about the cav it's worth mentioning that even if you don't use them for either of the (suicide) missions mentioned above they can also be used for most of the seccondary tasks attributed to units of 5 carrion. These are well worth persevering with because they have so many uses that simply don't occour to most people, but each to their own I guess.

Swapping out the 2nd archer unit will probably prove beneficial because (controvertial though it may be) units of 10 archers are just plain awful IMHO. Minimum core issues aside, I can offer an opinion on the four possibilities you have outlined:

4x Carrion
You should always field carrion in units of either 3 or 5, never 4. 3 is enough for most tasks assigned to carrion but by increasing the unit to 5 models you can also use them for things like crossfire and to grab a table quarter at the end of the game. If you use them as a unit of 4 then you're getting the worst of both worlds because you cannot gain crossfire or a table quarter with them and you won't want to sacrifice them for march blocking as readily as a unit of 3 because you're just throwing away the extra points for no good reason.

Since 1k games are generally decided long before table quarters become an issue and because in such a small game the carrion will typically get shot up pretty quickly anyway, I'd go with a unit of 3 here.

Tomb Scorpion
Always a solid choice, the only real question is if you have enough special slots to squeeze them all in. I note the comments you made in the other thread about carrion Vs scorpions but it's important to remember that carrion (though generally inferior in the long run) are actually much faster than scorpions in the all important early turns. This is important in a 1k game because an opponents war machines and missile fire can often cripple us before the scorps can show up using ICFB.

3x Tomb Swarm
Swarms are a little out of fashion lately but they can still do a decent job for us (mostly in an anti war machine role). At 135pts these are probably far too expensive for what they give back in a 1k list though. If you are looking to fill a core slot then a single base will be enough to tie up a war machine (it's only 50/50 if the swarm will actually win but even if it doesn't it will keep the war machine inactive until you can find a more permanent soloution).

Although swarms can be used for other purposes like tactical placement and an anti archer role, there are generally cheaper and more effective alternatives (most notably carrion).

Standard Bearer in Chariots
This is one of those things that falls into the personal choice bracket. Given the rest of your list, I would consider placing the BotUL on these because although it is obviously less efficient on chariots, it will help keep this vital hammer unit in one piece long enough to contribute and add an important bound spell. If you look over your list from an opponents perspective and ask yourself 'what would I try and kill first' you'll probably see that the chariots are gonna take some stick (actually a really good opponent would go for the archers, but 90% of people dump on the chariots first as a matter of course).

So there you go bud. Hopefully some of this epic has given you some food for thought and should -along with some trial and error- allow you to make an informed decision about what you feel will work best for you.