Making Casket of Souls Work?

[themortalgod]

So I've always loved the Casket in terms of fluff and visual appeal. Its just plain cool. Only problem is it feels pretty weak atm. It sucks up a precious hero slot and really isn't going to do that many mortal wounds unless the enemy really foolishly clumps AND you get lucky. I had originally planned to use catapult debuff to make it more effective until I realized that there is never a moment when you are firing the cask when an enemy can actually be under the catapult debuff.

I was wondering if anyone else knew of any ways to debuff Bravery in the hero phase? I can't think of any. It's amazing how often I'm facing enemies that are 1 bravery too high to activate the D6 MWs. 

Thoughts?

 

 

[Sception]

It's really not very good.  If your group allows homebrew, it gets a bit better with that unofficial TK battle tome that was going around a bit ago, not because they change its rules but because it's part of a decent formation plus it had a TK spell lore which makes it worth fielding multiple tomb kings who can benefit from the casket's casting bonus.

But that's all unofficial homebrew content.  In the game as is, well, it's a pretty display piece to use as a scenario objective.

[themortalgod]

16 minutes ago, Sception said:

It's really not very good.  If your group allows homebrew, it gets a bit better with that unofficial TK battle tome that was going around a bit ago, not because they change its rules but because it's part of a decent formation plus it had a TK spell lore which makes it worth fielding multiple tomb kings who can benefit from the casket's casting bonus.

But that's all unofficial homebrew content.  In the game as is, well, it's a pretty display piece to use as a scenario objective.

Ya, thats more or less what I've found. I have seen that unofficial tomb in my google searches, I doubt my play group would ever consider it. I think the casket could have potential if we had a way of debuffing bravery. It wouldn't be OP by any stretch but at least it could be more potent. Was hoping maybe there was something I'd overlooked.  

Unfortunately, GW seems pretty set on avoiding radical changes to warscrolls in general, especially in regard to compendium lists. So I suspect it won't ever be changing at this point. Though I suppose there is a pts cost that would make it viable if it got cheap enough. 

[Sception]

The unofficial TK book really isn't that unreasonable.  The only thing I find excessive are the faction traits - just keep the generic Death traits, add the TK spell lore, and it's pretty good to go.  Official support isn't likely to be coming, so maybe see if your opponents would be willing to let you try it out.

As for official stuff, the attacks from the casket are very lackluster, it's best ability is the casting bonus, but since that only affects liche priests (unlike every other Death casting bonus which effects all Death Wizards), you really want to be taking multiple liche priests if you use the casket at all, and then you run afowl of the rule of three.  Again, the unofficial TK book gets past this issue by adding a TK spell lore, so those priests have more options to make multiples of them less redundant.  If we ever get alliance level spell lores, then maybe that'll help.  I had hoped we might see such in the GHII, but apparently not.  Maybe in a future spell supplement or whenever the next printing of the alliance books will be.