How to deal with Tomb king constructs as high elves

[T1-M4T]

My apologies for the noob question as I'm extremely new to this game and only started playing last week. I was doing the vortex campaign as the high elves and I was doing the final ritual and taking care of the skaven stacks quite handily but then I started having problems when the tomb kings, who I haven't bothered all game, randomly attack me and started sending 3 stacks of mostly constructs at my capital lothern. After completing the ritual I decided to go on a revenge crusade against the tomb kings for sending a total of six stacks at my capital causing me a lot of stress.

The thing is I'm noticing that their constructs are giving me a lot of trouble in battles. My usual tactic of mass archer fire and a lot of phoenix gaurd/ swordmasters (including lothern sea guard) to tie up enemy infantry doesn't work nearly as well as their armor makes mass archer fire much more ineffective against them. Also my phoenix gaurd, which I thought would be the perfect counter to these things, also have a hard time dealing with them. Sure they are anti large and armor piercing, but these things have such elaborate attack animations (especially those necroshpynx and tomb scorpions) that they send my phoenix gaurd flying all over the place (making them difficult to pin down and attack) and autoattack their way into in my archer line in no time. My phoenixs can't seem to beat them on a one on one either.

So I realise that something with high mass should be able to deal with them. I've noticed that sending dragons into melee with them tends to work fairly well, but it's a pretty expensive solution, and I also can't tie down 6-10 constructs when I have like 4 dragons at most. And because I like to try to tie up the constructs away from my main line because they'll just attack their way into my archers anyways, my dragons start getting teamed up on by enemy halberds and archers. Also a funny thing I noticed in a siege battle against my capital, was that they were STILL pushing around the dragon garrisoned there all over the place.

So far, the way I've been beating them was just dealing with their other units instead. By doing this it seems to indirectly deal with them, causing their leadership to drop to nothing and disintegrate rapidly. But then again, this is why I'm having a very difficult time vs armies where at least half their army is made of constructs. Maybe I'm missing something or one of you can tell me a way to run circles around these things (figuratively)?

TL;DR Title question

[jscjml]

Sisters of Avelorn will delete tomb king monsters. Trust me. You can melt all of their monsters before they even get to your frontline

If you want to see 10k HP rank 9 necrosphynx get deleted in 2.5 seconds, direct 4 sisters to attack at it.

Although if you're talking about armies of straight constructs I dont know if you'll have enough of them with just 1 army. I suggest bringing another so its 2v1, even a trash army of LSG to tie them up may help you alot.

[RCMidas]

Also, your Eagle Claw Throwers. The High Elves' sole artillery piece is actually really useful against the constructs as you can set it to fire one painful armor-piercing bolt against them. White Lions and Swordmasters are useful too, since they can deal out respectable armor-piercing damage.

Remember, send your dragons and cavalry against Warsphinxes (which are good against infantry) and your infantry against Necrosphinxes (which are good against large, ie. horse-size or bigger). Hierotitans are damage sponges and you should try to avoid them as much as possible to focus on everything else.

The biggest construct threat are Ushabti, ironically enough, for being the smallest constructs. Don't let them flank or rear charge you whilst taking on opponents that look like they might be more of a problem. Focus fire and take them out early if at all possible.

[Hyen《A》 ♧]

And never let your dragon engage a necrosphinx. They are built to kill dragons and you should be thankful CA nerfed them down. In lore they can slice a dragon's head clean off in 1 swipe.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

If they have any scorpions kill them immediately. Due to brokenly huge animations the Scorpion just eats up infantry unless it's absolutely bogged down. Kill it however possible. Other factions have a sizable single-target smasher at range (eg lazer lizard), but your Eagle Bolt Thrower won't cut the mustard here. Bring along something else instead.

Battles should mostly consist of killing Scorpions by whatever means possible, then waiting for them to die on your Phoenix Guard which should be stacked with loads of AOE buffs on your guys and AOE debuffs on their guys.

Threats, in order:
- Casket of Souls: will deal huge damage to blobbed infantry if you let it fire away, but is not too hard to take out
- Bone Giant: while I haven't fought it it belongs here, as its ranged attack is very good
- Scorpions: much better than sphnixes at murdering everything, also three times as spammable
- Necropolis Knights: these guys are rarer than Sphinxes but they look like quite good cavalry
- Sepulchral Stalkers: do not let these guys anywhere near your dragons
- Ushtabi: highly mobile and will stuff up your archer line if you're not careful
- Sphinxes: these guys are not much of a threat as blobbed Phoenix Guard will easily kill them and the AI can't use them for peanuts:
- Tomb Guard: not a threat compared to the above
- anything with Skeleton in the name: will die with ease
- Hierotitans: avoid fighting these if possible, try to get them to arrive as reinforcements because army losses typically triggers before they get near the battle :P

[zefyris]

btw a low level handmaiden can easily tank any of those construct too.

[DecayWolf]

Same as any other faction.
- Enemy has armour? You'll need AP, sister of avelord best bet here.
- The enemy has a good charge and it's large? Phoenix Guards best line defense by far margin. If you're on budget you can recruit spearman, do not expect anything but holding the line, and definitely they'll be weaker, but if your goal is to save money...
- The enemy has a big blob concentration? Artillery and magic helps a ton.

Additonal worth to mention. Frost heart Phoenix adds a -9 MA attack aura, which would make most of TK's infantry struggle to land a hit, even some constructs such as Ushabti as well.
Dragons can be used to melt infantry and have a good duel against constructs, just remember to cycle charge, send him backed by the army so less likely to be the main target and shall be fine.

If you can defeat one faction, you can defeat them all, just by reading the tool tip, really.

[T1-M4T]

Thanks for the help so far everyone. Unfortunately I can't find the sisters of avelorn anywhere they must be some sort of DLC unit? Thanks Hyen and RCMidas for the tip about the necrosphynx. I believe I meant warsphynx in the OP but when I saw a necrosphynx in the enemy garrison I made sure to bring that down with infantry and it worked like a charm.

I added some extra artillery as per RCMidas advice and they also work like a charm at bringing down the problematic constructs, especially in siege battles.

And yep aidenpos, those scorpions were the reasons for most of my problems. It always seemed like even if it just barely reached the front line, phoenix gaurd there or no, it was free to run all over my army wherever it wanted, it was near impossible to bog down as it even pushed high mass units all over the place. Thanks for all your advice and priority list as well. The bone giants are indeed really nasty artillery and can't take them out in one calvery charge like I can with thier other artillery pieces

I'm having good luck with distracting one of the anti infantry constructs with a dragon or a lord while my swordmasters or phoenix guards back them up. It's a lot of effort for one construct, but these things have to go down one at a time eventually.

All in all, I managed to reduce the tomb kings to just a few pieces of land and I've noticed their army recruiting far weaker things as a result. I don't know exactly how they work but I noticed some of their buildings have a "+1 to warshynx capacity" or something like that so that must have something to do with it.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

And yep aidenpos, those scorpions were the reasons for most of my problems. It always seemed like even if it just barely reached the front line, phoenix gaurd there or no, it was free to run all over my army wherever it wanted, it was near impossible to bog down as it even pushed high mass units all over the place.

Scorpions are broken:
- The construct building gives +2 not +1, unlike every other building (the L4 Ushtabi building gives +2 but you need to upgrade it first and it's not cheap!)
- Their mass is the highest in the game (I think?) It's brokenly high and means they can wade through your infantry like it's not there
- Their attack animations are absurdly huge, allowing them to run through a whole line and then run off. Hah, if you need to get your own Scorps out of them it's usually easier to tell them to attack, and then they barrage through the line, rather than walk out :P

They have low stats compared to other monsters but their absurd animations are broken,

Thanks for all your advice and priority list as well. The bone giants are indeed really nasty artillery and can't take them out in one calvery charge like I can with thier other artillery pieces

I've never fought Bone Giants, but they look nasty :| Perhaps keep your dragons back and then send them on the Bone Giants?

Also, the reason Scorpions and Bone Giants are so high only the list is that everything else will die to Phoenix Guard spam. Ushtabi get bogged down, Sphinxes think that attacking anti-large infantry is a good idea, Ushtabi w/ great bows deal very little damage it seems, and even their good infantry (Tomb Guard) is pretty terrible and will die to Phoenix Guard. Don't bother bring Swordmasters specifically to eat their infantry - just bring more Phonenix Guard.

(Okay, catapults deal loads of damage to any infantry sitting there, but that's why you have cavalry :P)

All in all, I managed to reduce the tomb kings to just a few pieces of land and I've noticed their army recruiting far weaker things as a result. I don't know exactly how they work but I noticed some of their buildings have a "+1 to warshynx capacity" or something like that so that must have something to do with it.

Ah, the TK are a wacky faction:
- No upkeep or recruitment costs
- Buildings grant recruitment of units but also an increase to maximum capacity - so as you've noticed their buildings "Enable recruitment of Warpsphinx, +1 to Warpsphinx capacity." If you only have one Dragon Den, you can still recruit a full stack of Dragons. TK can't do that, and would need 20 Warpsphinx Status to be able to have 20 Warpsphinxes. But if they died, they'd be able to recruit more for free
- No restriction on Skeleton Spearmen or Skeleton Swordsmen, and these can be trained at a basic settlement building (= everywhere). Skeleton Archers do have a restriction, but it's +4 per barracks, which means that they'll basically never hit the limit lategame.
- To stop spamstacks of Skele trash as above, they have an Army Cap mechanic which is quite cool - you get more armies through a) research and b) an ultra-expensive 'craftable' (10,000 gold + 800 Canopic Jars, and each time you use this method it adds another 10k gold and 800 jars to the price).

These mechanics are quite cool and if you really like the game I can reccomend the Tomb King DLC.

All of this means that yes, if you snatch all their high level settlements they can only throw Skeleton Wariors at you.