Tomb kings one-day report

[Ratatatata]

Hi!

 

Here in Gothenburg, western part of Sweden, Age of Sigmar is flourishing. I´ve been playing Warhammer at the local club for 6-7 years now and I´ve never seen the buzz that is now. So, we´ve got a load of new players down at the club and we´ve had a lovely season of AoS games. So for the first time in a few years, we even had enough players to have a decent- sized Club Championship. There where 20-isch players signed up but due to life-getting-in-way-of-hobby- drop outs we where 14 players that made it to the end. 

I'm working crazy hours and moving houses and had a lot of things to do with organizing the event, so I knew there would be no chance in hell I'd get something new painted. Thus, I had the choice between the Sylvaneth I've been pushing around for a few months, or - Tomb Kings! 

So surely, TK it was. A lot of the new players had never seen or even less so played against TK so I thought it might be fun to get the dessert kings on the table. Although on round bases, the army is more or less the leftovers from 8th edition but I think I got a decent list going anyway:

Tomb King on Royal Sphinx, Ruler of the Night, Tomb Blade
Lieche Priest
Lieche Priest
Herald
30 Skeleton archers
30 Skeleton warriors
6 Necroknights
3 Necroknights
3 Chariots
3 Chariots 

We were trying out some secondary objectives scenarios with stuff like "kill the enemy general before turn 4" or "survive with a monster in your army" etc. I think we got it a bit wrong with the ratio between primary and secondary scenarios; a major win in one of the GH handbook scenarios gave you 10 BP, a minor 7 (and the opponent 0 or 3). Then the secondary gave you another 5 for scoring your own and an additional 5 for stopping your opponent from scoring theirs. IN hindsight I think a ratio of 14 for primary and 6 for secondary would have been better. Although, that might be ´cuse I - spoiler alert! - didn't win!

Vs Seraphon

First game I rock up against Seraphon. Really nice guy, good game. He had a Slann, some kind of tanky saurus, dude, 4x5 saurus guards, 3 krox, 2 bastiladons and some skinks and the Engine of the Gods. And probably something more, there was def a formation there somewhere. 

Primary scenarios where randomly selected for all players before the game, and this round we played Border wars. He deployed all the big dinos in the middle, most of the saurus guards  on my right, kroxigors on my left. 

I can´t remember what secondary he had, but I thought that there´s no chance in hell he´s killing my Tomb King so chose a secondary where I was supposed to keep the general alive. 

I anchored my central objective with skeleton archers, chariots to act as roadblocks. Sphinx and big necros to the left of them, skeleton warriors way out on the left to secure that objective and smaller necros on the right to tank that one. 

He could have taken first turn but didn't - big mistake. A lot of players just get a hard-on for that double turn. I said "thanks a lot" and moved everyone in place, controlling three objectives turn one. 

Dinos pushed in the middle, kroxigors went towards my warriors and the saurus guards tried to make a long move around a mysterious terrain piece. He did get double turn but failed one of the bastiladons charge. Engine went in to necroknights and oh boy did he not see what was coming there. Over a few combat rounds they tore it to shreds. My chariots road-blocked his other dinos and the TK went hacking at the second bastiladon in my turn three. 

Saurus guards had to go in on the necros one unit a turn thanks to some terrain so they just kept bouncing. Skeleton warriors tanked their objective long enough before the kroxigors finished them of. So primary scenario was a big win for me.

However, I did not factor in the mortal wounds spam of the bastiladons, even less so with two of them in the same area. My TK went down in the end, sadly in part because I kept forgetting that it halves the wounds AND also forgot the tomb blade. 

So it ended up in a 15-5 victory for me. All in all, an ok start, bu boy do you curse yourself when you lose out on something only because you´ve forgotten stuff! 

After that, it was time for lunch and beer-shopping, and then I had to sort out the match-ups for turn two. Which led to me getting to face...

 

Skaven!

Nice! There where two skaven players at the event and I´ve hardly had a chance to play them at all, neither the Skaven nor those players that is. Very exited! He had a Verminlord... something? The master clan thingy, whatever it´s called. 3 storm fiends, 3 units of clan rats (2x10 and one bigger unit), 30 (?) stormwermin, hell pit, warlord, screaming bell, a few other characters and... thats it, I think?

We played Blood and Glory. My secondary was to survive with a monster (aka Royal Warsphinx try 2), his was killing my skeleton archers. So I deployed them on my left, pushed up as far as they could go, with a big "come and get me" painted on their chests. And he did! Stormfiends, bell and two units of clan (one big, one small) rats deployed across them. Over on my side, the king and the 6 necros where close enough to see the peril of the archers. Then on my right the rest of the stuff just spread out to face of against hell pit and friends. His central part of the deployment zone was more or less empty. 

Gave him first turn and he pushed it, leaving just a few units of clan rats to cover the objectives. That meant the storm fiends and clan rats where close enough for the necros and the king. Buffed em up with smiting and the kings command ability, and yolo´d in to the storm fiends and the bell (due to some deadly terrain I had to take them both on at the same time). Turns out it was not much of a yolo moment as the snakes just tore through two fiends and what remained of the bell (having been the target of the archers prior). Things popped and fell apart and the left flank was all mine. Goodie! 

On the other side of the battlefield hell pit came crashing in to my poor skeleton warriors and proceeded to not impress at all, whiffing more or less all of its attacks. The warriors formed a shield wall, got boosted by mystic shield and added insult to injury by popping back 6 of them in my hero phase. Three necros then joined the battle and hey-ho. 

That left my chariots and tomb king to go for the last objective, i.e. to take on the vermin lord and storm vermin. That turned out to be a bit to big of a bite. We promptly had a nice pillow fight for a few turns which in the end left the king and the vermin lord standing there eying each other up. And thus, the game ended with a minor victory to the tomb kings, having also scored both secondary objectives. Go Tomb Kings!

Well, go me anyway. A few more beers went down and then it was time for game three. The "swiss" draw meant I'd be playing my good friend Mikael and his teleporting "I dream about Les Martin" Stormcasts. However, we've played each other at the very least a 100 times over and both felt that nah, not again. Club championships, lots of new players, armies we´ve never seen before, lets try something new. So I shuffled things around and made a new draw. Sadly that meant there was no chance in hell I´d win the tournament as I had to beat Mikael to do so. Instead..

Slaves to darkness

... was my final game. Or should I say, warriors of chaos? Most of it was re-based but with a lot of stuff still on the painting table, this was a blast from the past. A lot of warriors, daemon prince, lord on horse, gore beast chariots and 10 (!) chaos knights. We played Gift from Heavens and I was due to kill that daemon prince to get my secondary. 

I bunkered most stuff around a big (huuuuge, Bernie would say) building in the middle of my deployment zone, took first turn, buffed things up and stayed put awaiting the meteors. Chaos pushed forwards, got the double turn, and retreated a bit to get back to their objective. My turn two I anchored my objective with warriors and pushed everything up. 

Think I'll keep it short here, as it's getting late. Turns out neither chaos warriors nor knights are all that, at least not when facing a proper TK smash! Things fell apart pretty quick for my opponent. I never could get to that daemon prince though, as he was hugging the far end of the board. 15-5 in the end.

 

I got myself a "best painted" trophy, so that's great! With the pack we made we'd put sportsmanship and best painted at an extra 15 tournament points each, so with that win I could have taken bot the best painted and the overall win- trophies with me home. But that felt a bit to much (after all, I bought the trophies and had no intention of carrying them all home again!) so I just ruled it that the one with the most tournament points from the three games got the big one - so once again, Mikael got to take a prize with him home!

 

Must say I loved to play the tomb kings! I´d forgotten how much good synergies there are in that army. Really fun to play and good in each phase of the game. I'll end with a few pics, thanks for reading!

 

 

[Solaris]

Nice write up, really enjoyed reading this! It seems you have a very active AoS community in Göteborg, I'm gonna have to make the trip up from Skåne to visit at some point.

And oh man, a list with 9 Necro Knights... I wouldn't even do that to my worst enemy, haha!