MOAR TOMB KING PICCES!

Soooo I posted pictures of my Tomb King characters the other day... Here are some pictures of some the nifty toys that I painted to match the army at the same time.
My Bone Giant (yes I know they have a different name now)...




My Screaming Skull Catapult:
When I got this kit it was missing the throwing arm and since it was a gift when I worked for the company I really couldn't have asked for a replacement part... I do have crap loads of chariots soooooo my catapult got an un orthodox throwing arm. The giant warp stone rocks are from the original Warhammer siege set. I grabbed a bunch of these are different points in my career at GW and weirdly they are one of my favourite models to paint. Sorry the crew were a broken mess when I had these taken so their images are obviously not seen here... They match my regular skeletons.



Tomb Scorpion:
Gold... coming out of the sand... Yeah... pretty straight forward...


What is next for the tomb kings... Well, I need to play some games with them in this edition but I am hoping that at some point I can paint a howdah sphinx and I have made designs to make giant scorpion riders to use as necropolis knights... though the snake surfer models are beginning to grow on me...

Tomb King Superfriends

After having painted these models a few years back... I actually got around to someone taking some pictures of my character models...

Lets start with the group shot...

The Tomb King is one of my favourites... He is made from pieces of lots of kits but mainly from the blood bowl mummy model. I like that he looks less scrawny than the usual tomb king. As I painted him in a hurry I should got back and give his shield some extra love and maybe an extreme highlight or two (more) on his skin... There are three greys there now but they are just too subtle. I will have to finish painting this guy's flaming chariot sometime.

Next up is my mounted Liche Priest. Another of my favourites... He is made up from pieces of the mounted liche priest, plastic flagellants and a plastic empire mage kit.

His foot mounted brother is much easier to identify as an empire plastic wizard with the head of a TK blood bowl player and the top of the staff taken from the unused half of the mounted Liche Priest.

And last but not least my stand in Casket of Souls... I have started converting one carried by tomb guard ala the Arc of the Covenant on the move but have not gotten anywhere yet. This has been my stand in for a while. It is also my corpse cart when I use this army as Vampire Counts... You might notice the missing hand... Yeah... Should fix that one of these days...

Axemaster Recap (quick)

Well. I took Tomb Kings to a local 2500 point tourney on the weekend. You know it is a bad sign when you walk in and the TO calls you a fool for playing with an obsolete, weak army. OUCH! To be fair though... Tomb Kings are horrible. I lost the first and third games by a marginal level. I drew my 2nd and 4th games. I won my 5th game (more on this in a minute) and was massacred in my last game.

Tomb King magic is pretty decent but incantations don't gain levels of the casters soooo everyone was dispelling alot of what I was throwing at them. Which since TK cannot even march with incantations made for a hard time. The Casket helped because them people would hold dice to stop that letting me get off a charge here or there. Still I could be really speedy but when I hit it was just not enough. Skeletons just don't cut it anymore. The unit of 50 was a good tarpit for a a couple of turns but a lack of dominant magic really hurt my ability to capitalize on that.

I got best comp at the tourney even with the casket and three liche priests. I think that says lot about my army.

I was really please though that I was about to draw and almost draw so many games. I basically fought hard for the draw in every game. I was a aggressive as I could be but there was so much hard stuff out there that I just could not compete.

Now, as promised, the game I won was the banner mission. I really like that certain missions in fantasy now require you to think hard about them when building your army. I played High Elves in this game and my opponent had 6 banners. He then stuck his general (worth two) mage dude out in front in a large unit of lothern seaguard. I hammered that unit with my catapult, ushabti, and my giant. I was eventually able to wipe out the guard but the general got away. Thankfully he rallied in a nice bit of line of sight with the catapult and we played catch with a large magical flaming boulder. I win. Meanwhile my banners (BSB, General and Tombguard...) all huddled together away from archer spam and played the defensive game until he came to get me but by then I won the game. New tactics and army design is a good thing. It breathes life into the game and forces people to think outside the box.

In any event my tomb kings are going back in the box until the new book. (anytime now kids!)

B

P.S. My old friend Chis Cousins is back from living overseas and he is helping me to complete a half finished project I am VERY excited about. Hope to have lots of good photos tomorrow!

I'll give you a hint. An army of some of the best HTH fighters in the game. One of my old lots loves...

Rough Pictures of the Rest of my Tomb Kings

Well I haven't been able to get into the local shop for well lit, nice photos of the rest of the Tomb Kings but I thought that for now I would post some shots of what I have been doing. Please keep in mind that the lighting is CRAP!

Starting with my Tomb King and BSB: The king is a converted Blood Bowl Mummy as I thought the regular GW Kings and princes looked to "wimpy". The BSB is fairly straight forward except that I used a smaller banner top since he would not rank properly otherwise.



My Liche Priests: Once again I really didn't like the GW standard models so I converted an empire wizard and the head off of a blood bowl skele. I then used the top of the mounted liche priests staff to TK him up... The mounted one uses the legs off of the earlier mentioned mounted Liche Priest and the torso off of a flagellant. I rounded him out with bitz and bobz off the wizard sprue (empire). I really like how he came out. I will get better shots soon as his cloak is really cool looking in proper light.



The other Liche Priest on the Casket:
OK so I cheated.... I ran out of time and I am using my converted corpse cart (when I run this army as Vampire counts)... Once again, Empire wizard with BB skele head... Good times...



Eventually I will convert a "walking" casket ala The Arc picture from Indiana Jones...

Catapult:
I was going to run this as the straight model but GW did not include the arm in my kit... I do have 18 unassembled chariots though... Solved...




Big Boney:



Love that model... Might have to do another one soon...

B

Some Thoughts on 8th Ed Tomb Kings

Had my 2nd game of Warhammer over the weekend and really enjoyed myself. I played my mate Scooter and 2500 points of his beastmen. He had a few big beast herds, a bestigor herd, a big unit of minotaurs, a lvl 4 mage, a lvl 2 mage, some centigors, some pumba gors, a few chariots, AND a Doom bull…

I was running my Axemaster Tomb King list and he was running the same list he was taking to the GW staff tourney.

I didn’t take detailed notes but there were some moments of note:

The Bone giant ran smack into the minotaurs and was promptly cut down. Note to self: keep big boney from big scary infantry! He was awesome against dragon princes in my first game but got pawned before I could swing against the bullboys…

The Casket of Souls in AWESOME! I did not get it off once but the neg one to enemy spell casting makes a big difference. In addition I was able to get off several more incantations because Scott held at least two dice every turn to prevent the casket from going off. Had it gone off against plain beastmen leadership… Yikes!

Tomb King magic is hard to block. I have three priests and a king with two “My will be done.” I was able to move things willy nilly around the board and charge surprising distances. Opponents usually need 8 dispel dice to stop the incantations at the very least and that does not count the casket. Something is going off… Just need to make sure it is what I need!

Missions are weird. We played a random deployment mission and that screwed my liche priest deployments. Very weird but once again it added a neat element to the game.

A unit of 40 Skeletons with the banner of re-raiseing dead skeletons with a BSB is hard to get rid of. Got hit by Centigors to the front and a chariot to the side and after my next magic phase… almost at starting strength.

Ushabti are wicked. They were terrible for so long that I am shocked at how good they are now… A unit of 4 kicked the snot out of a unit of Bestigor with great weapons and ran them down. Brutal. Now just to keep them alive long enough…

I ran the hard to hit Tomb King (The WS 10 sword with the minus 1 to hit armour). He is in fact hard to hit. Challenged the BSB and was not hit and killed him back.

Icon Bearers are cool. I have to paint one now… Quickly… and a Screaming Skull Catapult… Progress logs to come soon.

Chariots are very hit or miss. I think the key to them is charging people in the flanks.

Thinking back I wonder… Can you incantation move yourself more than once in a turn?

Have to look that up… Anyway… Til next time gang…

Tomb Kings

Here is the rank and file of my Tomb Kings army.

Tomb Guard




1 Skeleton Unit



The other Skeleton block... You may notice that the HWS skeletons have blood bowl and chariot driver legs. Out of 45 skeletons not one has "regular" legs...




Chariots




Horsemen (note the heads and knee pads from the blood bowl kits)





My bare bones archers... Sorry bad pun!




Ushabti





Characters and the newer things to come soon...

WHERE THE HECK HAVE I BEEN??? (Tomb Kings)

Sooo besides healing from my surgery and catching up on work that I missed when I was out of work.... I really have not been doing much but spinning gears in my head. I picked up Island of Blood. Love the new version of the game... and played a game using my A game Tomb Kings.

Tomb Kings were not really competitive in 7th and boy are they brutally crap in 8th... or at least on first glance... Skeletons are worse than ever. Fear was nerfed and they crumble like no tomorrow. Everyone else is better at combat with step up and additional attacks which means that skeletons get smashed into next week even with the HWS ward save. On the other hand.... they never run and if built properly tomb kings magic is hard to stop meaning opponents will have a hard time stopping you from building those skeles right back. Sooo skeletons can be a useful tarpit... Excellent.

Their bowmen are essentially the same and the catapult (too bad I don;t have a catapult painted) is better with the new template rules and no guess range.

The new bevy of magic items definitely help the cause. I have a few ideas for items including putting a 2nd king in my list with a wizards hat. More magic goodness... I also like the idea of the duelists blade and the armour that makes people hit you on a minus 1. All of a sudden most opponents are hitting on 6's.. cool. I would probably take something with a little more punch though... Have to see...

Ushabti are great in the new book if overcosted... I would love to rock a horde unit BUT that would be a huge points sink...
And cost a million dollars...

Bone giants with thunderstomp are AWESOME! I wiped out a unit of dragon princes who charged me! AWESOME!

Icon bearers are all of a sudden useful again. (I just need to remember to use them!)

I ran a unit of tomb guard with my king and a unit of chariots into 50 lothern seaguard... It was UGLY! Poof! My army was gone.

Looking at the True Line of Sight rules the biggest winner could just be the old casket of souls... Also a great option I haven't painted... Hmmmm....

I have Axemaster coming up in a few weeks. Might try and get some new toys ready... Tomb Kings are a weak list but they could be fun to mess with while I learn the ropes... Or I could just play daemons...

Decisions decisions...

Anyone have any good ideas..?