Complete beginner looking for Death suggestions

[warhammernoob]

I'm a complete beginner to warhammer, so I'm looking for suggestions on skeletons. I really like the reanimated/swarming ability of the skeletons, so I would like to improve an army of skeletons specifically. I am young and have a very low budget, so expensive options are pretty unreasonable. My current pieces are the 10 skeleton warriors (1 champion with sword/shield, 1 standard bearer with shield, 1 hornblower with a sword, 3 warriors with spears/shields, and 3 warriors with swords/shields) and I have a necromancer and a start collecting skeleton horde on the way. Also I do not understand the point system, so if someone could explain that? I play casually with my brother, but still. My brother is the other person I play against, but he has the set for Stormcast vs Khorne, and is getting more khorne. Pieces include 2 retributors, 3 liberators, and with khorne, 5 bloodreavers and 3 blood warriors.

P.S: While making my skeletons, I made one and put a sword in each hand instead of a sword and shield. Does this mean I get another attack? If so, do the bloodreavers get an attack for each weapon, although their warscroll specifies that the troop gets only 1? 

Thanks in advance!

[AverageBoss]

A few things to note.

With skeleton warriors, all models in the unit must be armed the same, you cannot mix sword and spear in one unit.
You do not get an extra attack for having two weapons on the skeletons as that is not an option for them.
Bloodreavers only get one attack each.
There are some units that gain benefits for holding multiple weapons (rerolls to hit, bonus attacks, etc), or have different type of weapons they can use at the same time (such as the Mortarch you will be able to build with your skeleton horde box), but skeletons and blood reavers are not those units. Any such rules will be on the units warscrolls.

The way the points work is that you pay for a unit in increments of the minimum unit size. Skeleton Warriors are minimum 10 man for 80 points. Some units (such as skeletons) have a 2nd point value listed. This is a discount for taking a max size unit (40 for skeletons).

So a 10 man unit of Skeletons costs 80 points.
A 20 man unit costs 160.
A 30 man unit costs 240.
And a 40 man unit costs 280.

As far as building advice for what you have.

For the Martarch you have 3 options. Go with Arkhan if you plan on expanding into a more magic heavy list eventually. Build Neferata if you want a more defensive list focused on hordes. Manfred is best with several beefy elite units in an offensive list.

You will probably get more mileage building the cavalry as hexwraiths, rather than black knights.

As for the skeletons themselves, they are best run as either 10 man units with sword + shield, or 40 man units with spear + shield. A 30 man unit with spears is better than 3 separate 10 man units with swords. 20 man units are just not good, I would avoid those.

Welcome to the hobby.

[warhammernoob]

Thank you! The only one they had was Arkhan, supposedly he is a summoner, do I have to have units outside the game to summon them?

[AverageBoss]

29 minutes ago, warhammernoob said:

Thank you! The only one they had was Arkhan, supposedly he is a summoner, do I have to have units outside the game to summon them?

It says Arkhan on the SC box, but it is the complete Morghast kit and can be built in any of the 3 ways getting the Morghast by itself can. Same with the Black Knights in the box, they can also be built as Hexwriths as they are the same kit. That is unless you are getting a prebuilt one obviously.

As far a summoning, it creates brand new units on the table mid game through spells. These new units must be paid for in points using the reinforcement points rules.

[warhammernoob]

so do i need those units as well as my army? And does the skeleton horde set include those extra things?

[AverageBoss]

2 hours ago, warhammernoob said:

so do i need those units as well as my army? And does the skeleton horde set include those extra things?

I meant Mortarch instead of Morghast. Just got their names mixed up when I was typing. The 3 Mortarchs are Arkhan, Manfred, and Neferata (I described them briefly above, but you can check their full rules online). The box pictures Arkhan, but has all the parts to build any 1 of the 3 (so just pick which one you like/fits your playstyle best).

As for summoned units, they use reinforcement points. These are described in depth in the 2017 Generals Handbook (basically the core rulebook of the game that is updated yearly). A basic rundown is that you have to set aside some of your points to be dedicated for reinforcement points. So if you play a 2,000 point game, you might set aside 300 points for reinforcement. During the game you could spend the points in your reinforcement pool to summon new units (units that can be summoned will list a spell on their warscroll describing how a wizard can summon them). So if you summoned a unit of spirit hosts, you would deduct 120 points from the 300 you set aside, leaving you with 180 left in the pool.

The Skeleton Horde box only contains:
1x Mortarch (can be built as Manfred, Neferata, or Arkhan)
10x Skeletons (can be built sword/shield or spear/sheild
5x Black Knights or Hexwriaths (they can be built as either, so pick which you want before you start construction)

Black Knights, Skeletons, and Hexwriaths can all be summoned, but if they are in your initial list on the table, you would need to wait for them to be completely killed before you could actually summon them, at which point you would pay for them a 2nd time out of your reinforcement pool. Or you would have to purchase more units to have as a summoning pool of models to choose from during the game (and again paying for them with your reinforcement points during game).