Thule (1.2)

[Qwyksilver]

Railor costs quite a bit less than Azarphan. You're not fielding him to fight, or cast spells really. You're fielding him to bring another troop, and using the extra points to bring either more soldiers or to beef up other parts of your army.

 

DF = Divine Favor. Ignore the first point of damage dealt to a model. Leaders and elites only. 10 points. Unique.

IP = Improved Protection. +1 DV and Deflect. Leader and Elite only.

[Kengar]

Thanks! What about Moandain? Do people use him much? I like the fact I can bring in a model combining Leader with Mage 3/12 for less than Naomi, but I'm not sure what's the best way to run him. Should he just hang back and cast? Or is he useful in the thick of things at all? I gave him the skellies and zombies more to keep folks off of him than anything else. But the inclusion of Musician to speed up the troop seems to be counter to that.

[vutpakdi]

Railor costs quite a bit less than Azarphan. You're not fielding him to fight, or cast spells really. You're fielding him to bring another troop, and using the extra points to bring either more soldiers or to beef up other parts of your army.

 

Hehe, under v1.2 cards and in most games, I find Railor is a bit of a waste except as the cheapest leader for a Crypt Legion troop, to carry an extra bindsoul or two for Aysa, and to pop out and use the "Boo!" stunt if you're using stunts. Otherwise, he is too weak in combat or for spell casting to do much.

 

Ron

[Qwyksilver]

Railor is one of those living Tacticians.

You bring him because he's cheap and can bring along some other Models that are useful in a fight.

[rcrosby]

I dropped Azarphan for another Railor mainly to make room for more powerful spells on Moandain. There was already enough melee ability in the list, and Moandain was being wasted without better spells.

 

Rich

[Kengar]

Hmm, I see your point. I only have the one Railor model, but I have DHL 2147: Spectre, who'd make a fine proxy.

[stormseeker75]

Could someone please explain some basic strategy and tactics for playing Necropolis? I'm just getting started with these guys and it would be nice to have some basic tactical advice to work off of.

[Stubbdog]

Well, Necropolis has 3 basic strategies based on faction and subfaction lists.

 

1. Overload with cheap skellie grunts and swarm everything, while having a couple of powerful casters in the background.

 

2. Use a bunch of self sustaining vampires (they suck the blood of their kills to rejuvinate themselves) to slowly march across the field and throw in a few elites or solos to keep the enemy busy until they get there.

 

3. Ues the non-corpreal horses to race across and snipe main characters or mages, meanwhile having a bunch of archers flanked on each side to give you a three sided attack against the enemy. With breakers coming up the middle.

 

Oh, and dont forget about having an uber grave horror burrow his way to attackig whoever he wants too

 

In the 1.2 rules, the Gruesome familiar is a staple of the Necropolis as well. Used with mages. It allows a mage to sit in the back corner behind cover yet cast a spell from just about anywhere on the board (from whereever the familiar is at)

[Kengar]

Could someone please explain some basic strategy and tactics for playing Necropolis? I'm just getting started with these guys and it would be nice to have some basic tactical advice to work off of.

 

You'll get tons better advice from some of the others here, but I'll throw in my $0.02.

 

Necropolis' big advantages -as I see it- are Fear of Undeath, Cheap grunts, and Dark Energy (Crypt Legion). Vampiric Feeding is good too, but you can't have it and Crypt Legion, so you have to pick.

 

With skeleton grunts as cheap as 17 points, you can rival the goblin mobs in terms of swarming your foes under. You also have cheap archers, which does NOT suck. They aren't elves in terms of range/accuracy, but it's nice to be able to field a squad of four "bone bows" for only 127 points.

 

Leaders: Judas is -in my limited experience- pretty darned tough. And Moandain is a good mage. A lack of healing characters can be a problem but Dark Energy and Necromantic Surge offset that a bit.

 

The Necros natural enemy are the Crusaders. They can be a problem. They have high toughness and many are Fearless, so even though Fear of Undeath negates that, they don't get a penalty like non-fearless models. But Crusader grunts are relatively expensive, so you can have the numbers on them. Watch out for their clerics though, Kristianna's innate Holy Burst will mow down your grunts left and right while she heals her own if she has enough protection from getting swamped and a Marcus + Halbarad combo is bad news. Have your archers and mages pepper the clerics and leader/elites as much as possible while your breakers and warriors rush them. Throw a couple harvesters in the mix to help anyone with Trencher (i.e. Azarphan). Don't sweat it of your grunts get in the AoE, they're expendable. You can pretty much expect skeletal grunts, and even zombies, to go down after only delivering 1-2 hits anyway, so it's not a big deal. Plus with Dark Energy, they just might pop up again.

 

Mages: Naomi isn't worth it, IMO. She's Mage 3/12, but is over 200 pts. just because she can "shoot" people with her bats. Scrye shot is nice, but c'mon! I prefer Moandain, combining a leader with my high power mage. Mind you, this is "on paper," so in practice I might not like it so much. I played a 500pt demo game v. Necropolis (and Crusaders) where they fielded Malek, he seemed fairly effective, but by halfway through the skirmish he was gone (cut to pieces by my elves). Aysa's innate Undying Host is very cool, but if you have her churning the Spectral Minions out every turn, she isn't using her other spells, which is a waste of a Mage 3/12 to me.

 

Banshees rock. Blowthrough is scary. Plus in crypt legion you can field more than one.

 

That's my limited grasp of things. Hope it helps more than hurts.

[stormseeker75]

Thanks guys. It looks like I can use one of my favorite techniques: Lots of troops with some ranged support and magic coming from the rear.

 

I see a lot of people talk about Skeletal Breakers. Are they the best choice for vanilla troops?

 

What is Dark Energy and Necromantic Surge?

[Mclimbin]

Thanks for that Kengar and Sdog. I'd also like to know more about Necromantic Surge and Dark Energy. Are they in the faction book?

 

I have played a total of two Warlord games now (woohoo!), and the armies we've played are Elves vs. Necros, using the starting box models. So far the elves are 2-0, but we discovered that we were not playing some of the rules and SAs for the Necropolis correctly. After a re-read of the rules and choosing better spells and gear, I'm hoping to get even with those dang pointy-ear meat sacks!

[Kengar]

Someone please correct me if I get this wrong, I don't have my books here at work:

 

Necromantic Surge: A spellcaster can sacrifice a prepared spell and us it to heal damage to undead around him (can't recall AoE). IIRC, 1 pt. can be healed for every 10 full points the spell cost. So if Moandain sacrificed a 20 pt spell, he could heal 2 pts of damage, either 2 tracks from a multi-track model, or 1 pt each for two models.

 

Dark Energy: + 1 Tough to necro models (Crypt Legion only). If they already have Tough/1, now they're Tough/2, etc. If they don't normally have Tough/1 they have it with Dark Energy. Abilities like the Dwarves' Bane that usually ignore toughness can't bypass Dark Energy. So the undead always have Tough/1 in effect. In the case of Bane v. a model that normally had Tough/2 but has Tough/3 w/DE, then treat the model as having Tough/1 (DE only).

[Stubbdog]

Kengar you are correct.

 

So, with a surge using a 75 point firestorm. you could use it as a spell to kill enemy, or use it with surge and bring back up to 7 single track dead grunts back to full strength if they all died within a certain area (use the gruesome familiar to cast it in the corect place while the mage is sitting in safety elsewhere). If you were taking in a crypt legion army, then again you can be sure that there will be someone there to heal, cause nothing can get rid of the dark energy.

 

In that scenario, you still have to be careful that the gruesome familiar not be trampled but that is covered in a different thread.

 

Dark Enrgy is also nice with those that ave tough 3-4 meaning now tough 4-5, makes people have to waste extra actions to make sure they do a coup de gras on you, and even if they do, all it does is take away that 3-4 and make you still have tough 1. Most people spend so much trying to kill something that they dont have actions left to coup..

 

As far as the question on breakers, it just comes down to bang for the buck. in the current 1.2 cardset breakers have a DV8 MAV3, while warriors have DV8 MAV1. The cost difference is minimal. And with the low DV you know you are gonna get hit more often than not, so might as well be able to hit whatever it is back, or first. And dont forget about support bonuses on offense. Grab 3-4 breakers and get them into base to base and gain support. That MAV 3 now becomes 4-5-6-etc....

 

The same is true in most all factions, but the big difference is that in other factions both the cost of models is wider, as well as their DVs so this arguement is a little different in other factions.

[stormseeker75]

Nice, thanks guys. Both NE and DE look pretty fearsome. I guess DE is supposed to support the undead flavor, allowing them to come back from death to kick more booty.

 

What about the Bone Horror? That thing looks so cool. Is it used often, and is it worth it? (Pending cost changes of course)

[Stubbdog]

Yes the bone horror is worth it, but you have to sart him flying so be careful around long range archers as 10's always hit.

 

Even after he lnads he is great in combat, just have to remember he only moves 3 on the ground, so have to be careful where you put him. Want to be close enought to get in the fight, but far enough to where it is hard to swarm (or atleast swarm on a single move).