Undead 1995 points

Firestorm games Cardiff are holding an event in November and I plan on being there, I have not signed up as a player yet and may only spectate heckling from the corner of the room but if I do sign up this is the army I have in mind.

Skeleton spearmen horde
Mace of crushing

Wraith regiment
Hann’s sanguinary scripture

Mummy reg
Blade of slashing

Werewolves horde
Pipes of terror

Wight horde
Banner of eternal darkness

Lykanis
Howl of the wolf

Necromancer
Inspiring talisman
Aura (vicious, zombies)
Heal

Necromancer
Ej periscope
Drain life

Shambling blight formation
2 Zombie legions
Goreblight

All for bang on 1995 points

This list may be ok or it could be a clatty bag o pish I have no idea, all opinions and criticisms are welcome.

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looks interesting, the only thing I am noticing is that with 11 drops your opponent will be out deploying you and the lack of chaff means you’ll have to watch out for your match ups, but then you can steamroller forward with those legion tarpits so that’s going to cause issues to remove them

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Hi mate, by all means go and enjoy yourself!

In the past few tournaments I’ve been to, I’ve seen lists of all kinds. Both well-tuned agressive lists and more casual lists. In the first game you might up meeting an opponent with multiple tournament-wins under his belt. After the first rounds these things happen to even out so game 2 and 3 are usually against opponents with more or less the same experience as yours.

Likewise, the list you choose is of lesser importance than how you play it.

With that being said, a few tips here and there. Use whatever you want and discard the rest!

You have a nice mixture of hard hitting units (werewolves, wights) and damage-absolving units such as wraiths, skeletons and zombies. Of these anvils, 3 hordes of damage-soaking infantry (skellies, 2x zombies) are maybe a bit too much. I’d drop the skeletons if you want to keep the formation.

Spoken about the formation. I’ve tried it several times and found it to be only partially effective. Phalanx upgrade on zombies isn’t that effective.(no one i his right mind wants to fight zombies anyhow, so equiping them with spears will not change this). Moreover, I prefer zombies in hordes instead of legions (because: cheap) so the formation forces me to upgrade them twice.

If I were to change the list, I’d downgrade both zombie legions to hordes and drop the formation and the skeletons. This frees up a lot of points for additional units. As the previous poster mentioned, I’d aim for at least 12-14 units.

Also, you have a lot of points up upgrades/magical items. Aside from the inspiring talisman (and maybe the pipes of terror), I’d drop everything in favour of additional units. I like ghouls, but death packs, soul reavers and revenant cavalry are all good options.

Finally, you have only two sources of inspiring. (necro plus lycanis) which is a bit on the light side in 1,995 points. If you want to go the drain life /periscope route, why not upgrade the 2nd necro to a lich king? It’s expensive, but you’ll get a more potent drain life plus inspiring on a very sturdy base.

Good luck and enjoy the game!

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Welcome to Kings of War!
I definitely recommended going as a player, it’s good fun and the best way to gain insight on the game.

On your list:
It’s light on inspiring, I would go for one more source.
You don’t need to have an artefact on each unit. I would drop most of them and either take a cheap inspiring source (like a standard bearer) or upgrade the second necromancer to something that also has inspiring (like a lich).

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Echoing DB on most accounts:

  • Play if you can, it’ll be a great way to get a bunch of games in against a variety of armies.
  • Strip all your upgrades apart from the Necro’s inspiring + aura to see how many points you’ve got free. Drop the second Necro too.
  • Find a third inspiring. A Rev King w/ surge, possibly on a horse, is a wonderful budget hero. I’m also curious about a second Lykanis, as his square base will help do flanking work for your big shambling anvils.
  • Are your Wraiths multi-based as a regiment? Or is that 2x troops put together? Because Wraith troops are brilliant and they would get your unit count up and give you some chaff to work with.
  • Depending on how your points end up after the above, the Werewolves could use an item, whether that’s a humble Staying Stone, a shiny Chalice of Wrath, a fancy Helm of the Drunken Ram or Potion of the Caterpillar, or even Brew of Strength. They’re a great base that always feels like it could use one more buff.
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Nice venue and usually a decent crowd at the events.

List is a touch light on inspiring and having lots of different types of units can be a bit tricky trying to work together.

It has plenty of US and nerve, might struggle actually killing things - but you can win scenarios without doing that.

I tempted to run undead at next 1995 event I’m at (not same one!):

Zombie horde
3 zombie regiments
Werewolf horde with Strength
Lykanis
2 peg vampires
Revenant on Flying Wyrm with Sharpness
Vampire on Dragon

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I recently did a tournament with this army list:, It’s 2,300.

For downgrading to 1,995 I would drop a unit of soul reaver cav and a troop of ghouls. What remains would be:

*horde ghouls
*troop ghouls
*troop ghouls
*Ghast, aura, blade of slashing
*Ghast, aura, gnome-glass shield
*revenant cavalry troop
*revenant cavalry troop
*revenant cavalry troop
*regiment soul reaver cavalry, potion of the caterpillar
*regiment soul reaver infantry
*regiment soul reaver infantry
*Necro, bane chant, inspiring talisman, +1 level, shield of shadows
*cursed pharaoh, wings

this leaves 20 points to spend.

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Thank you all for the advice it’s much appreciated, i’m reworking the list, the plan with this list was to plough into the enemy steamrolling into them like @Gerrcinn said and hopefully surviving long enough using healers and drain life to hold objectives.

I’ve dropped the formation and skeletons I agree @Vince it freed up a lot of points for other things, also changed the zombies into 2 hordes and maybe i’ll add a zombie regiment too

I’ve changed the 2nd necromancer into a liche and dropped a lot of magical items said by vince @DarkBlack and @Boss_Salvage the liche is keeping the periscope to use with his drain life. Yep boss my wraiths are all troop bases, i’ve changed the regiment in the list into a few troops and I was thinking about a second lykanis, one for war machine hunting/distraction and the other for flanking like you said.

I agree with you @Sceleris it will struggle to kill, I was hoping for lucky hits or just surviving, that’s a hard hitting list you’ve got I like it, alot of fliers.

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Solid changes! For the Liche, I recently convinced my buddy to run Boots of Levitation on his and he’s loving it - essentially a mini-Mhorgoth, tho he’s been using Alchemist’s Curse (4) + Surge (10) rather than Drain Life, which just hasn’t been panning out for him.

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Wouldn’t it be cheaper and better to get drain life over alchemists curse? I’ll have to look that up in the book I haven’t read much of the new spells.

A few changes

Zombie horde
Zombie horde
Zombie reg

Ghoul troop
Ghoul troop
Ghoul troop

Wraith troop
Wraith troop
Wraith troop

Mummy reg

Werewolf horde
Helm of the drunken ram

Wight horde

Lykanis

Liche king
Ej periscope
Drain life

Necromancer
Inspiring talisman

15 drops and plenty of chaff, might change the some units for another lykanis, ghoul ghast, a pegasus or i might bring the goreblight back.

Yes it would. That said, Alchemist’s curse is a very powerful spell. With a 12" range on a movement 7, flying platform getting a non-cover shot off is not that hard.

Your preferred targets have def 5+ (if not 6) so that’s 9 dice, hitting on fours with piercing (4). This will do on average about 4 wounds a turn, which is very good for a ranged attack! For instance, a unit of KoM knights will go from fresh to “waver-on-ten”. If you combine this spell with other ranged attacks, it can easily take out heavy targets in a turn or two.

Using the periscope for a safe hit behind your lines will diminish this a bit as AC is affected by cover, but a wound or two is about guaranteed.

The real tradeoff, of course, is that Drain life does heal your units and isn’t affected by cover (so the periscope trick is much better here). I’d prefer your setup for a drain life caster and the boots of levitation + alchemist curse @Boss_Salvage suggestst for a curse caster.

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I also have never had much luck or interest in Drain Life, between the tiny range and the multiple rolls of 4+ (in general) just making the few dice you throw really melt away. However, the strongest argument for Drain over Curse in your list is that you don’t have anything else to follow the Curse up with, thanks to no other shooting / offensive magic. Drain I still think won’t do much for you, but it will add 1-3 wounds to a combat your dudes are grinding, which is nice.

On your list, it seems rather light on hammers, but love all that chaff!

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Yeah I took a look last night at AC it’s a pretty wild spell it looks good but I do feel more comfortable with the drain life spell to help keep my units healthy.

I am a bit light on hammers it may have been a mistake dropping the goreblight, I can always swap the zombie reg and a wraith troop and bring the goreblight back or get a zombie troll horde.

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Trading the Zombie reg and one Ghoul troop to bring back the Gorb would be great, and still leaves loads of chaff for trash duties :broom:

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It has be one of the Wraith troops to go i’m afraid, ghoul troop won’t give enough points.
Zombie reg 70 points
Wraith troop 120 points

Freeing up the 190 points, 175 for the goreblight leaving some points left for magic items, banner of eternal darkness for one unit and a staying stone for the lykanis.

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I hadn’t realized just how much chaff you had (6 troops!) and I was bothered by the Necro doing so little with his life, so I started tinkering:

Werewolves (Horde) - Brew of Strength
Wights* (Horde)
Zombies (Horde)
Zombies (Horde)
Mummies (Regiment)
Wraiths* (Troop)
Wraiths* (Troop)
Ghouls (Troop)
Ghouls (Troop)
Goreblight

Liche King - Ej Periscope, Library Mindfog (3)
Lykanis
Lykanis
-------------------------
Total Unit Strength: 22
Total Units: 13
Total Points: 1995

Sure, it’s light on surge, but the list isn’t overly reliant on it anyway, as it’s largely a hammer and anvil affair. Mindfog on the Liche is to give him something to do at range early or late in the game - he could have Hex instead but the list doesn’t really capitalize on it, plus I like that shot at an end game rout on a battered enemy unit.

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Yeah the Necromancer is only really there as a back up surger incase the Liche is killed off or unable to use his surge.

I do like the double Lykanis but I only noticed reading the book earlier I totally forgot they only inspire Lykans so i’d have to rely on the Liche to inspire everything else.

Mindfog is interesting I like the range and the thought of an unlucky nerve roll by my opponent in the first round, no damage done but a double six taking one of their best units out the game.

Conditional inspiring got ditched by update in CoK22 - see changes on p62 - except in a limited range of units.

Lykanis inspires anything

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Yep page 62 I see it now cheers.

A lot of chaff is 9/11, so that’s only a lucky 10 :wink:

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