Tombkings in 2017

[Aezeal]

So a guy I know is getting back into AoS (for a firestorm campaign where we team up) he will be playing death. He has tons of tombkings and also vampire counts stuff. 

I was wondering which tombking units/models are deemed overpowered or normal or underpowered for their 2017 point costs (to me they all seem a bit weakish at first glance except for the skeletons but those are slow as hell (and tombkings can't really make them much faster I think).

[WillofNagash]

From what I have seen it looks like tomb kings are right on the money, nothing over powered nothing underpowered. If I had to say something is really worth its points I would say the ushabti are top notch male beasts.

[xspire]

Ushabti's and chariots are very points efficient, they also work great as a 1, 2 punch combo - they're slightly under costed to make up for the hero support that TKs generally need. This makes them really interesting for campaigns, especially if it's escalation. If he has a lot of VC stuff as well he could just play death and abuse the ushabti's, hard to know what to suggest without seeing what he actually has though!

[Aezeal]

9 minutes ago, xspire said:

Ushabti's and chariots are very points efficient, they also work great as a 1, 2 punch combo - they're slightly under costed to make up for the hero support that TKs generally need. This makes them really interesting for campaigns, especially if it's escalation. If he has a lot of VC stuff as well he could just play death and abuse the ushabti's, hard to know what to suggest without seeing what he actually has though!

I don't really know. From the past I know he basicly has everything tombking and he said he had recently gotten more Ushabti's so I think he could put a few of them on the table. I guess skeletons, Ushabti's (melee seems better than bows) and a few of the cheap characters might be good. But it does seem so SLOW... How can you contest objectives if it takes 3 turns to get there?

[xspire]

12 minutes ago, Aezeal said:

I don't really know. From the past I know he basicly has everything tombking and he said he had recently gotten more Ushabti's so I think he could put a few of them on the table. I guess skeletons, Ushabti's (melee seems better than bows) and a few of the cheap characters might be good. But it does seem so SLOW... How can you contest objectives if it takes 3 turns to get there?

Well if he was going pure Tomb Kings then that's what the support is for, Incantation of Desert Wind, My Will be done, Necrotect etc - Speeds everything up if that's what he was going for. If he's just getting back into AoS then TKs isn't the easiest army to play if I'm being honest, you have to really understand how all of the units connect together to get the most out of them. So he might be better off playing mixed death using some TK units.

[Aezeal]

He played a few games at AoS start and he's a good player with years of fantasy experience I think he'll be able to get most out of thearmy if everything is not underpowered (how do you feel about the catapults btw.. it seems... not so good for the points).

[themortalgod]

The Good

As mentioned already ushabti are really efficient now. Especially if you can get mystic shield on them near a necrotect. A 2+ save re-rolling ones is effectively invincibility against the vast majority of infantry in the game. The key to Ushabti is putting them up against damage 1 units. They aren't nearly as effective against monsters and such which are going to completely remove their armor in most cases.

I think because chariots are deemed so nice on the surface that Skeleton Horsemen are often overlooked, they are actually really efficient for their points cost and are faster than chariots since they can run and charge. One often overlooked combo is to put necrotect movement and incantation of the dessert wind on a unit of horsemen. you now have a unit that can move 27 + D6 inches then charge 6-12". Thats a 45" threat range. 47" if you give them the tomb king command ability as well.

Carrion are surprisingly good, another unit that gets sort of overlooked. They are never going to be front line workhorses but you can really abuse that flying high mechanic to get behind enemy lines. Also food for thought: Nowhere does it say an invincible unit of carrion cannot hold on objective while high in the sky.  

Tomb swarms are amazing speed bumps. For 80pts you get 10 wounds that if the enemy doesn't kill in one go they just burrow and pop back up again at full strength behind his line next turn.

Sepulchral Stalkers are often overlooked in favour of the much harder hitting Necro Knights but for 140pts stalkers are a really good source of mortal wounds your opponent has to deal with in his back line.

The Not-so-good

In my opinion the warsphynx and necrosphynx are just way overcosted now. They are certainly formidable monsters in specs but at over 400pts they just don't bring enough threat considering say Khorne can bring a Bloodthirster that offers similar threat for 230pts. A standard warsphynx is ok though at 280, though nothing amazing. They used to be amazing when they halved all damage done to them, with that being nerfed to halving the damage characteristic it means they are significantly easier to kill now for way more points.

Necro Knights just don't match their points value anymore, they used to rule top tables when comboed with Settra but the points nerf hit them a bit hard.  A unit of 6 costing about a quarter of your army in a standard game just isn't going to bring enough threat to ever be worth those points, in my opinion. Yeah it will run over most things pretty well but just aren't worth the cost imo.

Catapults got hit a little bit harshly by the GH2017 nerfs in my opinion. They already were only mediocre at 120 points with their old rules, GW, however, felt they needed a 25% pts increase along with a nerf to their rules. A single catapult only has a 33% chance of even doing damage each turn. That just isn't impressive to be paying 160pts for a unit thats likely to do almost nothing.  

Scorpions are unfortunately also pretty inefficient. They used to have one saving grace in that they could "deep strike" closer than anything else, but GW nerfed that for GH2017 so now its a tough sell to pay 80pts for a scorpion when you can pay 140pts for stalkers that fill the exact same role but bring triple the number of wounds and have ranged attacks meaning a 9" charge roll isn't critical.