Empire of Dust - Clash of Kings 2022

Kings of War Army lists and Tactics
21

There are really effective counters to elite shooting lists though and there are armies and army builds and even just certain units that shooting alone really can not touch at all in any significant way. @Chicken-Jim.

I played a mixed infantry and alpha strike list on my last tournament and enemy shooting, even shooty Goblins, was/were not really a problem … IF i closed quickly and decisively.

Some other guy brought a full alpha strike all mounted army with 3 flying monsters as well, … which i’d guess would just melt a shooting skewed list. /shrugs.

Frankly … personally I’d have a much harder time against pure alpha lists than against heavy shooting lists. (All those angles that you have to watch out for to deny flanks are getting really horrible to keep track off once there’s a critical number of high speed hammers on the table.)

That said: I was thinking of including some more shooting myself … but another high speed hammer and maybe even some chaff is much higher on the priority list right now. :wink:

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22

Not an EoD player but have enjoyed the discussion on the changes.

The newly added comments in this article are interesting on the Clash 22 updates:

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Thanks @MarkG for pointing out this useful source of information!

And to the previous posters; I am by no means a tournament player, but still I also feel that empire of dust is not one of the best (meaning strongest in gaming) armies out there currently. Which is fine, as I have other reasons for liking them. Maybe it could be worthwhile to also talk more about why we chose EoD on the first place and how it is affected by Clash 2022, to have some positivity in here and feed the hobby mojo :wink: Helps with painting 40 skeleton spearmen if you know why you do it…

On my part, a large part of my EoD history started approx. 15 years ago; with the teenage me deciding that undead Egyptians on chariots are “cool”! Well, my classmate played highelves and also back in WHF, tomb kings were not the most competitive fellows. Still, also on the gaming I fell in love with their grindy, outlasting nature, their built-in reliability and relentlessness (invocations were great!). Don’t judge me on this, it was mostly kitchen table stuff that produced these gaming experiences.

Fast forward 13 years; After showing my old books to a friend and checking a certain website I noticed that the old world had gone BOOM! However, the wargaming spark was kindled anew from looking through the old army book and I looked for other ways of bringing my (literally) dusty skeletons on the table. After some google action, I came across KoW and hurray, there was the solution!

And what a wonderful solution it was; the rules are streamlined enough to play the game infrequently with my wife without having to invest 2hs to reading first and Mantic provides wonderful models at an affordable price. Resulting in me also picking up a slowly growing Basilean army to have an in-house enemy :wink:

I love my EoD now for similar reasons as 15 years ago; they feel relentless, never-ending. For each skeleton you put down there are more than enough to replace them (heal and drain life), they grind better than almost anyone (Mummies, soul snare supported blocks, again drain life) and just keep on coming from every direction (surging them 50x50 bases everywhere). Skeletons are crappy on their own, but if you can make the army tick as a clockwork, they are a force to be reckoned with. And Clash 2022 helped further refining these qualities, I think.

Cheers, sry for the long post, unfortunatly out of potatoes.

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24

Sure, let’s talk about fun stuff with the army and the more uplifting aspects of it.

Fun stuff I haven’t tried out for kicks;
–Rah’s with 2 giants. Small frontage from the monsters and CS3 makes for a major can opener battleforce vs. Def 6.

–Soul Snare with double Drain Life Behemoths
All that healing on a Def 6 Me 3 pair of monsters.

–Shadowbeast on a Pharaoh with Eternal Guard
Everyone else us using the spell why not try it?

–Scorched Earth caster + Wither and Perish caster.
Use it to defend a guardian archer horde hiding in some difficult terrain for extra laughs.

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25

A friend of mine went up against a top player in the region who runs EoD and was demolished. This was the list and I’ll add some commentary from him which I will paraphrase;

rev cav troop, skirmisher’s boots
scavenger regiment
chariot legion, bows, brew of strength
guardian horde
guardian horde
guardian archer horde
behemoth
monolith
undead wyrm
soul snare
rev champ, surge
rev champ, surge, steed
IoS

18 US 13 drops

My friend said his halfling list had a lot of shooting which did nothing against -/17.

-Chariots went on a flank with the rev cav and a rev champ. The troop would charge, move to flank, surge charge, repeat, repeat. The chariots came behind shooting and projecting threat. It was more of a problem than he thought it would be.

-On the other side he basically put all his guardians, IoS and behemoth “that loved getting charged.”

-He said "If your units are fearless with 17 nerve chaff might be a waste.

-As always, use terrain to your advantage. Sit objectives in the right spots and have a plan

-“The list has so much healing that as long as something doesn’t break in one round, they are fine.”

-He said he’s also seen lists with five guardian hordes perform well. I’ve seen this before and was actually getting the models for it (2 archers, 3 melee)

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26

What you have to watch out for is not to overly “rely” the sturdiness of units … no matter how sturdy they look. Everything can be killed. Moreover: Everything can be killed efficiently when planned for.

15/17 or -/17 is a very common hammer nerve that people usually take into account when building their lists and choosing their hammers. Those can and will be taken off in one turn against good players.

Heck … I’ve lost two Tree Herders in the first round against Order of the Green lady during a tournament because I overestimated their “sturdiness” … and those are DEF 6 -/18. So there’s that. Learned my lesson there, always have chaff handy, always. You may not need it every battle … but then you do … :wink:

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27

Well, in the words of former U.S. Master Dustin Howard, “Everything is chaff.” He used a warrior horde and giants as chaff when needed and it worked

The gentleman who plays the list I posted regularly beats the current U.S. Master, Keith Conroy (which you can hear about on the Counter Charge podcast from about a month ago) and the only standard chaff he runs is the scavenger regiment.

I get what you’re saying though. I myself am merely a mortal so I’m nowhere in the league of those players therefore I need my rev cav, scavengers and whatnot to survive. Podium players practice far more than most and as friends of mine who place very well in major events have told me “A good player can make any list work.” I know that Mr. Conroy played over 200 games on Universal Battle during the pandemic and won Masters with Herd which was considered to be the worst army in the game.

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