Flipping through various warhammer forums I ran across a post from today (at the Heresy-online forums) about the release of the new Tomb Kings army book next year in 2010. Now I’ve been playing tomb kings for a long while, and while I enjoy using the army I always felt that there was something missing. They had a real potential to be a powerful army but somehow fell short in practice, mostly due to the fact, in my opinion, that they are not made to deal with other armies. There’s no point in having powerful magic when you’re playing against a Skaven army with loads of power dice. Also the extra movement spells, while good, are rendered useless against armies such as Chaos and Elves, which are upon you practically on turn 1, giving you little room to move. Everything crumbles a little too quickly, even for an undead army. Perhaps it’s because I was never really such a tactical genius, but that’s my feeling of things.
Some rumoured rule changes:
- Units can now stand and shoot. At last!
- Magic will remain overall the same, except with a few minor changes
- The casket of souls will be changed a bit: it will have 3 incantations to choose from:
- Heal d3 wounds on all units (including chars.) in the field
- An incantation similar to the one in the current edition.
- Grant d3 units a movement phase.
- Also a ward save to its crew and priests – this alone is enough to convince me to field it when the new ed. comes. Before it was simply way too vulnerable for its points cost, no matter how many scorpions or swarms you put around it and especially BECAUSE you had to put other units around it.
- The Tomb Prince as General will allow users to field chariots as core (about friggin’ time). This is a very important change for many, since it allows magic heavy armies to have more flexible combat choices.
- The prince will also be able to carry the battle standard. The current bsb is pretty much useless, so this is a good change.
- The bsb will be getting a few changes too, but will probably still be in 2nd position after the prince.
- Skellie warriors now have the light armour upgrade for free. Quite nice, though as has been said on the forum, a point less in the cost would actually have been much better.
- Light horsemen can be given spears and shields and light armour, which will bring them practically to par with the current heavy horsemen.
- Indeed, the heavy horsemen unit is off the list. No more skeleton heavy horsemen! Good riddance.
- Tomb guards are now going to be costing just 9 points each!!
- The Ushabti wil have 4+ AS, 5+ WS, and a movement of 6, as well as costing 55 pts. This is a slight improvement which will leave them a little less vulnerable to shooting on the field.
- A very interesting change is going to be the carrion, who are now going to be upgraded to Strength 4 and will e cheaper. That is, let me say great news. I can see them becoming a staple in many armies with this change.
- The Tomb Scorpion, one of the current faves, is going to be more expensive, at 100pts. However, it’s getting 5 wounds instead of 4! This is very, very nice, and will turn it into even more of a killing machine. The raise to 100 pts will simply make it cheaply priced rather than very cheaply priced.
- SSC now counts all his as hits. Anything which right now is counted as a partial (thus requiring a 4+ roll to hit) will be a full hit in the next edition. This is certainly a good thing when you’re trying to get just one hit in order to induce panic.
- The bone giant will have some new options in terms of equipment, but will probably be as boring and as powerful (if used well and with a bit of luck) as ever.
Finally, the Tomb Kings' rise from the sands of mediocrity?
Now people remember, these are just rumours floating around. Perhaps they are just wishful thinking, and perhaps there is even more yet to come. In all fairness these changes are the rounding up TK need, and with a few new additions, they could become a well balanced army. Let’s hope that these rumours will hold true!
Alas that the TK will be the last army released, since that probably means that when afterma couple of months the 8th edition comes out with the first army book or two, the TK will be back to square 1: underpowered again for the next 2 years.
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