My take on the new TK (tl;dr - still great)

[swarmofseals]

I've seen a lot of fretting on the internet about how GW has "killed" the Tomb Kings with the new compendium updates. Less here, of course (TGA remains a beacon!) but I still feel like this is worth posting here in addition to Reddit (where I see a lot more griping). As someone who owns a lot of TK models and has done a lot of analysis on the Death Alliance, I think the demise of Tomb Kings has been greatly overstated. In fact, I think GW has gotten it just right with the compendium changes -- TK should remain a viable (even competitive) army albeit perhaps not a top-top tier tournament competitor. In this post I'd like to explore why I think this is the case.

First, a broad overview of the changes: Tomb Kings keywords got reworked. They are now a largely self-contained army with a lot of internal synergy. There are a few combos that have been eliminated with this change, but the vast majority of the Tomb Kings power combinations still exist.

Tomb Kings models are no longer summonable. This is a bummer, but do remember that you can still summon models from other death factions with your Tomb Kings army.

The Tomb Kings named characters have all been replaced with generics that do essentially the same thing. Aside from the totally OP newfound ability to kneel while playing with "Settra", there is one real game changer: these characters are not unique, and thus can have command abilities and artefacts.

Finally, several warscrolls have had their points increased. For the most part, I think these changes were in line with other nerfs that came in the GHB. Necropolis Knights and Settra were both quite undercosted in the old pointing. Other units similar to NK for other factions (such as Kurnoth Hunters) have also had their points increased. Screaming Skull Catapults also went up, but again shooting (and especially long range shooting) was broadly nerfed. If these points increases were in a vacuum I'd say that they were probably a bit too harsh, but in the context of other changes in point costs I think that they are reasonable.

Before giving up on the Tomb Kings, I'd suggest considering how powerful some of our options still are:

Skeleton Legionnaires may not get a massive regiment discount, but they are arguably more powerful than their Deathrattle counterparts. Tomb Kings still has an outrageous buff game, and SLs benefit from all the buffs. It's not hard at all to get them hitting on 2's and wounding on 3's with 3 attacks per model at 2" range. Add in Righteous Smiting and they will absolutely shred lightly armored enemies.

Skeleton Chariots are still a fantastic tarpit that can actually do a bit of damage on the charge.

Skeleton Archers remain a powerful option. Unbuffed they are mediocre, but with the proper support they can put out tremendous damage. Righteous Smiting and Khalida buffs give a unit of 30 a similar ranged offensive efficiency to Kunnin' Rukk!

Catapults supported by a Necrotect are more expensive now, but they are still quite good at sniping characters at long range.

Necropolis Knights are very expensive now, but when buffed they are still VERY strong. Even with just Settra's buff, they put out tremendous damage and are tremendously efficient in doing it. Their defensive efficiency is not as strong as it was, but it'll still cause your opponents a lot of headaches trying to completely kill these guys off so that they stop coming back from the banner.

The last unit I specifically want to mention is melee Ushabti - these were not changed. In the old pointing system, Ushabti were among the most efficient units in the Death Grand Alliance. They were overshadowed by Necropolis Knights which scaled better with buffs, but they were seriously a hidden gem. Their defensive efficiency against single damage attacks is unparalleled, especially when supported by a Necrotect. They aren't bad against multi-damage attacks either; in fact they are quite decent in that scenario. Their offense is also very efficient -- not as good as a fully buffed horde of Skeletons or Necropolis Knights, but they function well even unbuffed. In fact, they are good enough that despite the lack of synergy I think we will see GA: Death armies seeking these guys out.

Aside from those specific mentions, I'd also like to note that a lot of the other Tomb Kings warscrolls are perfectly viable. They generally sat in the midrange of what GA: Death has to offer in terms of efficiency, some even on the higher end of that range. These units tended to see less play before simply because Necropolis Knights were so undercosted. Now they may see the light of day again, which is great as there are some fantastic models in the range.

---

Overall, I think Tomb Kings are far from done for. Yes, some of our best stuff has taken increases in points but that is largely true across the board. Kurnoths, Skyfires, Arrowboys, Jav Prosecutors, Stonehorns, Thundertusks, Moonclan Grots, basically every battalion in the game -- loads of things were nerfed. Tomb Kings still have an AMAZING buff game (far better than anything else in GA: Death), and the fact that our named characters can now take command traits and artefacts is huge. Overall, I think Tomb Kings can be very good, and we also don't need to feel bad about putting Settra or some snakes on the table as they are now much more appropriately costed. We also don't have to feel bad about fielding things like Sepulchral Stalkers or Tomb Scorpions, as those units are much more reasonable now. Ushabti still rock (rimshot).

If you are a GA: Death player who was hoping to include a contingent of Tomb Kings in your non-TK army, well, I'm sorry. Your plan probably won't be as powerful as it was before. That said, there are still plenty of Warscrolls in the TK roster that work fine (even well) in a GA: Death army. No, you won't be able to take a subfaction allegiance and still get whatever else you want, but isn't that kinda the point of the subfaction allegiance abilities? It's to reward you for taking a narrower, thematic focus.

Now you will need to choose between different fun sets of toys: a pure TK force with great internal synergy, a mixed death army with the cream of what TK has to offer combined with the rest of GA: Death, or a different Death subfaction with a more limited roster but some powerful abilities to compensate. To me, that's a fantastic choice to have and I'm thrilled that I can still choose to play a strong TK army that feels very distinct from the rest of GA: Death. GW didn't have to give us that -- they could have squatted us entirely or pointed us in a way that made us completely uncompetitive.

[TristanGray]

Well this is great to hear! I'm really thankful for your well thought out take, giving me hope!

 

So... anyone got some ushabti they want to offload?

 

Edit: I'm in Canada

[HiveFleetCerberus]

One thing that I do wish they kept is the warscroll battalions. Even if they reworded them to use skeletal legionnaires instead of generic warriors, we could at least theme our army and get some bonuses.

(Also, couldn't they have just reworded the Tomb Kings summoning spells so that instead of death wizards knowing them, Liche Priests (or a similar keyword) know how to summon them)

[herohammer]

I recently played against TK using the new points and I agree that the army is still fine. I mainly have seen people play TK as a self contained army since AOS came out and so I don't think that the removal of their minimal external synergies hurts the army all that much. Other than snake spam, not much got hit and overall the army still has more overlapping synergy than the more disparate death sub-factions.

 

 BTW I wish I had not sold my 36 ushabti...

[swarmofseals]

3 hours ago, herohammer said:

36 ushabti...

36 ushabti    36 ushabti     36 ushabti  36 ushabti 

[herohammer]

I wanted to run a horde of 18 with bows when the 8th edition tk book came out but when it became apparent later in the edition that tk in general and ushabti in particular were not exactly point efficient I ultimately sold then shortly after the launch of aos. I had a bow horde and a melee horde mostly in finecast.

[deynon]

sigh... thinking I've never had even one despite loving them....

[Dave Fraser]

Super stoked at running TK again, the army is phenomenal fun but has clear weaknesses. 

I totally understand why the summoning was removed, it makes a clear break from them getting used in other death armies. 

I am in the fortunate position of having 18 ushabti (12 GW, 6 bows), 12 snakes and some of every other unit they have (except apothes). So I can run as hard or as soft a list as I feel like.  

The only unit I feel gets a rough time of it is the tomb guard 80/5 leaves them wallowing in my cabinet (I use the old mummy models for mine so really love to get them out).

At the start I talked about clear weaknesses and I'd say the limited access to MWs (bolt, stalkers & snakes) and rend -2 (3 characters, scorpions, necrosphinx &  bone giant) makes the army struggle against a few of the popular armies right now (sylvaneth 2+ save ignoring rend, stormcasts 1+ save dragon, morngul and a handful of others). But is this any worse than other armies - not really. 

[Sception]

I get (though hate) the removal of summoning, but the removal of healing spells as well is just a slap in the face.  The casket wasn't fixed at all.  OP missed the very painful change to how sphinxes work that make them easily overwhelmed by horde units - at the same time as the royal and necro are getting slapped with painful price hikes.  The catapult was also nerfed heavily and hit with a price hike at the same time

On the up side, while the tomb kings lost Deathrattle synergy, it's important to work out that the necromancer's signature spell targets skeleton units, not deathrattle units, so an allied necromancer can still power up TK skeleton units, including necroknights or a regular warsphinx.

[HiveFleetCerberus]

One thing I wish they had done with the summoning spells is change them so friendly Tomb Kings wizards could summon them, instead of cutting it out completely.