Tomb Kings test drive

Yesterday Matt and I had a quick game of Fantasy to test drive our new armies. 1,000 points, Dwarfs versus Tomb Kings. I lost pretty conclusively after my Hierophant found himself standing just in the right spot to be in line of sight of ten Thunderers and nature took its black powdery course. My army actually survived its crumble tests for a couple of turns after that but with Matt's army almost completely intact we both knew I was only running out the clock.

Regardless, a loss with a new army is an educative experience. Obvious first lesson: pay very, very close attention to where the Hierophant is standing.

I think I might have made poor use of my general. I took a Tomb Prince on foot and kept him in a block of Skeleton Spearmen with a Necrotect. They did well as a team, conferring Hatred and WS5 on the unit between them. However, I also took a unit of three chariots. Both units did okay but as the game went on I began to suspect I'd made the wrong choice with the Tomb Prince. The chariots made a charge against a ranked up unit of Dwarf Warriors and did well in that first turn, impact hits and spear bonus and all, but weren't half as effective in succeeding turns. Once the impact hits and spear bonus were spent they just had their natural strength and weapon skill to rely on, neither of which are that good. Spirit of the staircase and all but I can't help but wonder how WS5 might have helped that situation.

The Tomb Scorpion suffered a mishap when I tried to bring it up behind Matt's battle line, appearing instead from my table edge. It spent the next three turns shambling forward and then crumbled to death when the Hierophant died. Pity, but it taught me early on not to rely too much on Entombed Beneath The Sands units.

One unit that did really, really well were the Ushabti who were a lot more durable than I expected them to be. They held their own for six rounds of combat against a ranked up unit of Dwarf Warriors practically identical from the one that both my Spearmen and chariots just bounced off.

I'll not lie, Tomb Kings are a challenging army and they're distinct enough from the Vampire Counts that I'm having to relearn how to work a whole bunch of units I thought I'd already have a handle on. That's actually kind of cool and something to look forward to.

Im just hope I get some use out of the Tomb Scorpion next time, I love that model.