BLOGS FOR THE BLOG GOD (TK/UL)

[Kremmet]

After reading all the recent blogs on here, I decided to write up my own for my Tomb Kings.  While I've always been interested in the sand skellies (their WD premiere was the first time I looked away from 40k) I've never really felt the urge to own an army of them.  That changed recently as I started rebuilding a bit of the Redmond WHFB scene with new players.  I wanted to play something a little lower on the totem pole than my old standbys of DE and DoC while also trying out something new.  In came an old friend with an old crush and I found the answer to both in TK.

 

Now, with Undead Legions being a thing and me with a brand new Nagash, I've decided to give these bones the TLC they need to really make the army mine.  As this isn't solely a painting blog, I'll give you all my list run down which is not currently open to discussion in terms of models as I have a deadline of the next Sparkle Party Deathmatch to get things ready by.  I am however interested in thoughts on future expansions as I have a lot of skeletons ready to go.

 

 

The List:

 

Nagash 1,000

 

Necromancer: Channelling Staff 80

 

3 Skeleton Chariots: standard bearer 175

3 Skeleton Chariots: standard bearer (Banner of Eternal Flame) 185

30 Skeleton Archers: Master of Arrows; musician; standard bearer 210

5 Dire Wolves 40

5 Dire Wolves 40

 

Khemrian Warsphinx: Fiery Roar 230

 

Casket of Souls 135

Terrorgheist 225

Screaming Skull Catapult 90

Screaming Skull Catapult 90

 

2,500 points

 

If I were planning to run things as a little bit tougher of a list I'd drop the Necro and the SSC's for a second Terrorgheist, but as it stands my conversion plans/wallet leave me with no ability to field a second TG.  Overall my play testing has resulted in moderate success by my standards.  Nagash definitely brings an interesting change to the overall game mechanic in that he forces my opponents to play on a clock: either kill Nagash/his army or suffer the wrath of his summoned horde.  Definitely a breath of fresh air if you ask me!

 

The Pictures:

 

Here's what people actually want to see: models!

 

 

This is how all of my skeletons start out.  This was the previous owner's first army and, well, it definitely looks like a beginner painted it.  I don't quite have the patience to strips everything so I'm just doing my best to paint over everything although the huge amount of mold lines I feel obligated to remove leaves some bare plastic.  I'm also not a huge fan of the red accent color and much prefer the classic TK turquoise.  I mean, why mess with a classic?  

 

 

My test revision.  Overall I like how he turned out even if the dry brushing from the previous paint job shows through a little too much.  I've also learned a deep hatred for painting bows.  I don't want to spend more than 30 minutes a skeleton and the damn things produce paint tears so easily if you apply any amount of alacrity to them at all!  Bah.

 

 

The gang's all here!  Well not quite, but it's a start.  I really like how the standard turned out as I've felt for awhile now that the best TK armies involve bright colors.  With so much sand and bone it's nice to have a few eye catchers to really help the army pop.

 

 

This picture didn't turn out too well.  Not saying that the others are all that great given I'm just shooting with my phone in my LGS, but this was the best one I got of the archer unit so far.  Ten models in and things are beginning to shape up.  Note that the bases aren't finished yet as I'm still contemplating whether I'm going to do dead tufts of grass or just a few patches of dead static grass.  Jury is still out.

 

 

You like dags?  I like dags.  I'm not a fan of the current undead Direwolves that GW produces as I much prefer the concept of live "creatures of the night" being summoned by the vamps/sand vamps.  I get that they have the Undead rule, but so do ghouls and I think that an obvious mechanic concession shouldn't impact modeling.  That said, I didn't actually do all that well modeling here  :D .

 

The dogs on the left are just some left over wolves I have from my OnG army.  I would prefer them all to be the new Chaos Warhound models, but I could only find a few of the ones I own and I'm not really looking to buy and paint new ones while I still have so much of the project to go.  I painted these guys recently to break a bit of a painting lull I've been in since the end of September.  Sometimes you've just gotta force yourself to do things so you don't end up paralyzed by indecision and I must say I'm happy with the new results.  

 

Painting-wise, I thought that hyenas as a color scheme would fit with the army nicely and I'm glad I went with that.  The warhounds impressed me so much that I tore about my bits room trying to find their tails and horns so I could finish the models.  Ideally I'd like to do the simple conversions required to make them look more like normal hyenas, but I'm fine with a little chaos in my army.  It is the End Times, after all!

 

 

Some close ups of the hyenas.

 

That's about it for this update.  Hopefully I'll post sometime next week with more army progress.  Until then, here's a bit of a sneak peak of my next build for the army:

 

 

Any guesses (I know it's not terribly hard)  ^_^ .

[Kremmet]

So I got a chance to play the list last night.  It was Empire VS Nagash in a 2500 pts Battle for the Pass.  My opponent's list, as I remember it, was something like:
 

Upgraded Valten
Mounted lvl 4 on Light

Luthor Huss

Mounted BSB

20ish Inner Circle Knights w/ full command and great weapons

6xDemigryphs w/ full command

6xDemigryphs w/ full command

Hurricanum

 

This is how things looked after deployment:

 

 

My deployment from left to right was:

Warsphinx

Terrorgheist

Nagash

5xDirewolves

3xChariots

30xArchers w/ Necro

3xChariots

5xDirewolves

2xSSC

 

From my left, his was:

6xDemis

Hurricanum

Inner Circle with all his characters

6xDemis

 

Turn one saw the Empire push forward hard and the Terrorgheist being taken out by an IF Shem's (boosted version netting him ten hits and eight wounds).  In response, the Undead backed up and sent the dogs forward to chaff.  One SSC nailed the Hurricanum and killed it while the other (predictably) misfired and was unable to fire.  On the summoning side of things I brought in a unit of 20xGG w/ great weapons and the Banner of the Barrows along with six Spirit Hosts.

 

 

As shown above, turn two saw the ICK go into the summoned hosts while the demis both went into dogs.  There was an attempt at Timewarp, but Nagash handily dispelled it.  Valten being the only guy in the ICK with a magic weapon (I also dispelled an attempt at the magic weapon prayer) was rather impressive when he rolled three ones for his wound multiplier and failed to kill a host.  The hosts ended up losing a few of their number and both dog units are now yelping in Hell.  

 

Undead turn saw Nagash and the 'sphinx go into one demi unit while the GG rear charged the entangled ICK.  Magic saw a scrolled unit of snake knights, Smiting on the GG, and a failed attempt to summon a character (3D6=three ones).  Nagash and his kitty proceeded to slay three demis while taking no injuries of their own (to be fair, Nagash did all the work as the cat isn't exactly great at being a monster), but they stuck.  The GG slew 12 ICK while taking a bit of damage themselves.  Valten being Stubborn stopped them from fleeing.

 

At this point, I stopped taking pictures as we were laughing and eating, but things didn't really move from their positions from here on out.  Highlights were the GG being slain, Nagash taking exactly seven wounds from an IF Shem's and, of course, failing all seven ward saves.  This was after he summoned some snake knights who, along with the catapults, took care of the other demis before taking out Valten and friends for good.

 

Ended up a 1620 VP victory for Nagash.

 

Things I learned: 

 

Taking saves can suck it.  Also, the list is deceptively lacking in armor cracking.  I'm definitely not gonna swap things around now as it's not the biggest deal, but it is definitely something I need to keep in mind while playing.  While the Empire player's list wasn't exactly optimal (we discussed ways to make it more effective while staying with his theme of ALL COMBAT ALL DAY) it still showed me some glaring weaknesses the list has such as what to do about death stars.  I'm not super worried about elven 'stars, but a well placed Chaos 'star (a very real concern as I assume End Times book two will lead to a large bump in the local population) and ogre 'stars are a real problem.  I could swap some of my lore choices around on Nagash to combat this as he is a death pimp, but I think it'll come down more to what I'm summoning and when.  I might place some increased emphasis on units like Cairn Wraiths, Stalkers, and Black Knights against such foes.