What's the deal with Tomb Kings?

[👁]

They're so frail, and three out of four of them have abyssal starting conditions, how are you supposed to beat anything as Tomb Kings? Sure sure no upkeep is nice but they also have no income, and it takes huge investments to do research, and only their high end units are any good, and you have to conquer territory and build high end buildings with funds you don't have to field high end units.

I just don't get it, what am I doing wrong?

[Tisiphone Edge]

Immediately build 20 units and use your starting money to get a Casket of Souls. If you're playing as Arkhan your Vampire Count units fill in a lot of the holes the starting Tomb King roster has (you can actually chase things). Make income and growth buildings everywhere.

[Oderisson]

Several things.

For starters they are easier the higher difficulty level.

Counterintuitive, I know, but you get most money from battles. You recruit loses for free, Enemies need help. Also one province is able to field whole high level stack by itself. No other faction can do this.

Sacking is also recommended.

Tomb kings play tall, not wide.

[franz]

Just rename all your lords to Settra , then you cannot lose

[GalloglassCA]

Most of them start with a unit that makes the early game easy. Settra of course in general is easy and chariots, Settra and the warkitty will carry early battles. Plus as someone mentioned being able to get a super early good artillery piece is nice. Arkhan I don't have a tonne of experience with but his start is a bit hard now since the updates. Finding a sack city and leveling him up seems a good idea.

Khalida has the worst starting units and unfortunately contradictory traits. She isn't horrible and her ME start isn't bad unless the Lizardmen early aggro you. Khatep can actually have a decent start as he has decent sack city options. You can also semi cheese for an early accelerated start, I've managed to get two Ushabti as early as turn 15 with more shortly after.

[Mr Robert House]

get 2 armies, get casket of souls, flock of djaf l, archers and anything else that isn’t complete trash asap, and get another army

[Agemouk]

In the current patch environment Tomb Kings are a fun challenge for experienced players, and definitely a real challenge for beginners to the game with only a couple of hundred hours played, especially when you start playing on H and above.

Each of the lords can beat the game in vanilla on VH/Legendary, though they’re a consistently harder campaign than any of the S or A tier races until you start to snowball hard after around turn 120.

Once they get to the endgame, they snowball like an out of control rollercoaster even in pure vanilla.

[grab these bandages]

Complete one time vh/vh khalida campaign only with basic skeletons and caskets and can’t see difference between tk units. They all crap, lords crap, mages crap, constructs crap and useless on vh battles except sphinxes. I don’t understand why this faction may funny if there is no good units for around 80 turns.

[Jack Deth]

Well it is tabletop accurate...that's what the deal is with Tomb Kings Mr. Seinfeld.

[👁]

The problem with getting income from battles is that the Tomb King units are trash, like, how do you win battles with them? And you need buildings to get units, and you need to tech up to even field multiple armies.

I guess maybe I could create a second army stacked full of the weakest units and use them primarily to raid for income, then have my main army with my good units hide and ambush... Hmmmm...

[Tisiphone Edge]

Originally posted by 😇:

The problem with getting income from battles is that the Tomb King units are trash, like, how do you win battles with them? And you need buildings to get units, and you need to tech up to even field multiple armies.

I guess maybe I could create a second army stacked full of the weakest units and use them primarily to raid for income, then have my main army with my good units hide and ambush... Hmmmm...

Try playing as Arkhan. The Bats and Hounds that he starts off with enable you to pursue fleeing units and harass early-game ranged units (which skeletons can’t do), and cudgel ghouls are infantry that can actually deal damage (which skeletons also can’t do). Also get a Casket.

Arkhan’s first opponents are Brettonians. Their early armies are like yours (it’s all peasants meant for the meat grinder) but they can field multiple armies at once amd you can’t. I recall managing to take out Repanse and the other Brettonians by forcing their peasant blob into a choke point (skeletons are *really* good at this) and using the casket to kill them by the hundreds. If you get this down their superior numbers will mean nothing and you’ll get to a more stable position. Also don’t fight the dwarfs. You have no anti-armor aside from your scorpion.

Also keep in mind that the Tomb Kings aren’t supposed to be roaring out of the gate. If you don’t want to play the long game, you might enjoy another faction more.

[👁]

Ok so with Arkham, ignore the campaign advice to push towards your ancestral capital and leave the dwarves alone until you've farmed the Bretons and teched up.

Breton lords can basically solo the skeletons but I can use fast Vamp units to harass their weaker squishier units and break them.

Good advice. Do you have any tips for the other Tomb Kings? Khalida is pretty much helpless as far as I can tell.

[Gorwe]

Skaven are also pathetic, economy etc wise, but I guess that Skryre and Eshin are really doing a lion's share. I like Mors the best, but meh. Undercity mechanic sucks.

As a Tomb King, you need to be patient and to pick your fights. And units. Khalida buffs those Archers to such levels only matched by Thorek Quarel, Khatep has tons of AoE(USE IT!) and Settra is an overkill. Concerning Arkhan, use Spear Infantry combined with Crypt Ghouls, Wolves and potentially Archers. Also one more advice. GO DOWN, fight with Eshin, Sudenburg, Tlaqua etc. Do not pick fights with Bretonnia until you've got some gas(put at least 2 Arkhan buildings in every province). Because they have a nasty habit of pulling each other into the fight with you AND also calling for Dwarf help.

But theGrowth buildings are almost necessary. The other building depends on variety of factors. Khalida wants Archers of all sorts + Cobra Constructs, Arkhan wants T3 barracks ASAP(...Hexwraiths?), Khatep has a rather late game oriented plan(you really want to go super vertical) and Settra wants...whatever. But Tomb Guard + Chariots + Warsphinx fit him well ; no specific rush here.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. But, please, state difficulties and whether you're playing ME or Vortex.

[mercus]

The main thing with TK is that you can't really succeed if you throw all your heroes and constructs into one army. Your garrisons are so bad that you can't rely on them. You have to spread out your good units across your armies. It's really easy to get to Settra's short victory condition in Mortal Empires: the game practically feeds it to you, so that's an option if you are finding some of the other LLs too hard.

With TK your lords and heroes are very strong. Light magic is probably the best wind that they have but the Nehekaran line isn't that terrible either despite what some people say.

Unlike factions that rely on money, you can also use attrition techniques when you are a in a real bind. You can throw stacks of junk at invaders to delay/mislead/wear them down and then rapidly recruit replacements. In almost all situations your units are just weaker model for model than most of the other races in the game. However you can make powerful heroes with the crafting system more easily than some other races. This is what helps to make up for the weaknesses in their unit roster.

You have to outplay the enemy with TK because there are situations where especially on VH/legendary you will encounter armies from other factions that are just stronger than any single army of yours, in which even some of your best units are just not all that good. Unlike with some races that can field armies that will just mulch through multiple elite enemy stacks, most of the time with TK even your 'good' stacks are crappier than the average endgame stack.

[Necrophoria]

I remember when they first came out. Settra always conquered the map in vortex. . . At some point they got nerfed and their presence was no longer felt.

[Necrophoria]

Same thing with the coast. I remember being scared to mess with them. Otherwise they'd build a cove on a settlement I could never remove. Good times. Now it's just the typical order tide one needs to look out for.