Undead tactics

Undead tactics:

General

TACTICS Against:

Orcs and Goblins- Use your necromantic spells to cause havoc whilst you and your enemy are at a distance. Wind of Death is especially good because it has no range, can kill many men at once, and it should be a real problem for the enemy. Screaming skull chuckers are very useful because it will find it easy to hit a unit even with a wild scatter, and when it does hit it will cause panic and send maybe two if not three enemy units running for safety. One good plan is to include about three of these catapults and three carrion. After the catapults have done their job, Vanhals Danse Macabre or the Staff of Damnation to charge the carrion and mop up the fleeing gobbo’s. Due to the low leadership of this army you should start causing fear and terror as soon as possible. Chariots are quite effective in big numbers but it is important to concentrate on all of them charging to the same part of the battle field and not have them spread out attacking regiments that they cannot hope to beat. The hell banner is a very useful standard which can be placed on a chariot as it does -2 to all enemy leadership levels within 6" this is very good when you have a wraithlord riding on a chariot with this banner because it causes terror. A strong cavalry regiment is good against Orcs and goblins especially against night goblins with bows or shortbows as if they are armed in the way that I mention in the tactics for cavalry because they cannot penetrate the armour at all. The only problem that I see in the Orcs and Goblin army list is that a large regiment of Black Orcs or Savage Orcs riding War Boars may make a mess of your army if they get to you before you kill them with curse of years. Orcs also have some devastating spells like da krunch and brain bursta so try and dispose of the shamans as soon as possible.
High Elves- I feel that High Elves are the only race who are equal or maybe even superior to the magic might of Undead. Repeater bolt throwers can be a nuisance to an Undead commander as they are able to take out some of your toughest regiments such as mummies and wights they are also capable of dealing death to you characters. To get around this threat I would use the spell Wind of death which has a fair chance of taking them all out in the first turn. Another problem for the Undead commander will be with the High Elf spells Banishment which is very deadly for Undead and Drain magic which will stop you using your own spells.Glamour of Teclis can really stuff up your plans and fiery convocation can wipe out a lot of mummies. To counter these spells I can think of three solutions. Firstly you could take a level four wizard armed with the book of Asur, this way you can take five of the high magic spells and stop your opponent getting them, Secondly you could take the banner of Arcane Warding a few spell eater shields (bufos hex scroll is good as well) and many a dispel magic scroll, a down side to this is that it will cost you about an extra 500pts. My last and probably best solution to get the biggest monster with a vampire lord, Carstein ring, Frost blade, Black amulet and Potion of strength and go straight in for the kill.
Dark Elves- Dark Elves only have one weakness, Magic. Use this to your advantage and you should win every time. It is good to take as many dark magic spells as you can against Dark Elves as this limits the number that they can take. Dark elves have many hard hitting regiments like witch elves and cold one knights. Look out for these, if they crash straight into your regiments you will have a hard time battling them unless you have some powerful characters like Nagash or Vlad von Carstein in your own regiments. Witch elves are reliant on their frenzy to do most of the damage, this means that if you charge them then they do not get the bonuses. The fact that they are frenzied means that they must always charge the closest enemy so you can lure them out into the middle of nowhere. Dark elves also have repeater bolt throwers but one screaming skull right on top of it is sure to put it out of action. Crossbows are numerous in a Dark Elf army but luckily these will only take out your skeletons and other mediocre troops that can be raised straight back from the dead.
Wood Elves-The same tactics against high Elves apply for playing against Wood Elves. The only difference is repeater bolt throwers and treemen. Luckily Wood Elves have no artillery, unluckily they have treemen to replace them. A Treeman as one would expect is made out of wood, which is flammable. This means that when you are playing against wood elves take as many fire weapons as you can . Taking bright magic isn’t a bad idea, but I usually like amethyst.
Empire- Cannons, Tanks,War Wagons and more cannons. Artillery play a big part in an empire army. For this reason when playing against Empire I would take 2 carrion per 1000 pts. This means that if it is a 3000 pt battle I would take 6 carrion. These carrion should be able to take care of any Great cannons or volley guns. The biggest problem with playing against an empire army is that you can never expect what your opponent is going to use as the Empire army list is so big. You can almost guarantee some Kislev horse archers, Reiksguard knights, Steam Tank, Great cannon, Volley gun, and usually a wizard lord. Empire are no great magic users but when faced with the Supreme Patriarch or the Grand Theonogist things can get ugly. Luckily for you Empire are not the best h-t-h fighters and just about any of your characters would have no trouble in wiping them out in just one turn. Against empire with all their cavalry I would try and take as many flyers as I can. This not only gives me the edge in h-t-h but I can fly high and guarantee that I will always be the one who charges which will completely cancel out the speed of the empire cavalry (this means that many points which paid for their movement stat. Are wasted). You can also launch flank attacks and crush any artillery which might otherwise have pounded your flanks.
Dwarves- Stunties can prove a problem to an inexperienced Undead commander. The main weapon of the Undead is not swords and it is not magic. It is fear and terror. Unfortunately Dwarves specialize in not breaking or fleeing. They also have runes which can be very deadly indeed. Because of these runes can make a weapon and the Dwarf character cost more than 600pts and are capable of killing outright with no armour save. A good idea to deal with these ultra powerful weapons is to get a general mounted on a flying creature with sword of destruction which will cancel out the magic effects of the Dwarf’s weapon. Also because of these powerful weapons it is good to take a character with skull staff (it lets you know what magic weapons your opponent has within 12"), and the ring of corin (destroys a magic item within 12"). Don’t be stupid and take magic items that protect you from spells,(Dwarves can’t cast spells). Because Dwarves have a magic resilience it may dawn on you to not use magic against them but this is a big mistake, magic is one of your chief weapons, and is definitely needed to counter the Dwarves destructive cannons. Undead armies have a problem with their lack of march moves, luckily Dwarves are slow movers also which manes that you should always get to charge. Even though Dwarves have high leadership, Screaming skull catapults are still useful because even the Dwarves high toughness and armour saves will not protect them, and if you bombard them with enough screaming skulls they are going to have to do a bad dice roll at least once and be forced to flee, and when this happens your carrion can swoop down on them and that makes one less regiment that you are not going to have to fight against. One important thing that you will have to do is get stuck in to the Dwarves as fast as you can. While you are not in h-t-h combat you should be willing to suffer many casualties from missile fire unless you give your regiments magic items like the Silver Seal, Ruby Chalice and Cursed Book. Because of your need to get straight into h-t-h combat I always take the Staff of Damnation and use it to march move my whole army. Never be scared of taking on a regiment of Troll Slayers.
Chaos Dwarves- Chaos Dwarves have some very deadly things in their army which has the potential to wipe out much of your army. These things are Earthshaker Cannons, death rockets, Bull centaurs, Chaos Dwarf spells if you have mummies and Great Taurus if you have muumies.Firstly as Earth shaker cannons pose the greatest threat to your army they should be destroyed straight away. I can think of three good ways to stop them, they are as follows.
- 1. Kill the crew with magic, (The Dark Mist, Gaze of Nagash, The Curse of Years, Doom Bolt, Malecdition of Nagash and many others).
- 2. Get a large monster that can fly and rip the crew to shreds.
- 3. Cast Traitor of Tarn on the crew. (Do you know how easy it is to land a Earthshaker missile on a chaos dwarf’s head when he is only 6" in front of it).
The same three ways above are useful for destroying death rockets. For Bull centaurs and Chaos Dwarf spells I can only say, if they’re dead then they can’t harm you.
Chaos- Chaos have some very powerful characters such as chaos lords on chaos dragons but luckily for you Undead do as well (a good effective way of disposing of these huge mounted characters is to equip a necromancer or liche (because of their high Bs) with the sky arrow of Naloer which does d6 S10 hits and can be shot at creatures flying high and it costs just 30pts). The one thing which is surprising about chaos warriors and beastmen is that they always seem to fail their leadership tests when testing against fear and terror. In one battle against my friend who plays chaos, my unit of 18 skeletons charged his regiment of ten chaos warriors and they failed their test and in the end they ran of the edge of the board which was about 30" away. I don’t think that chaos have many really dangerous spells which can upset the game but if the enemy has at least one Nurgle sorcerer look out. Countless times a sorcerer of Nurgle with Staff of Nurgle and Witch Flight spell has killed Nagash automatically. One of the main advantages that chaos have over Undead is their fast movement. Chaos knights apply this advantage of movement and when armed with shield, chaos armour, barding, lances and banner of rage they become very lethal. One good way of stopping this fast moving regiment of destruction is simply to raise a unit of around 5 skeletons right in front of them. Once when I did this my opponent was forced to charge his regiment of Arbaal the Undefeated and 5 chaos knights into my eight skeletons, he wiped them out sure enough but the next turn Nagash and Vlad von Carstein charged into the combat and wiped out the whole unit. Because chaos usually have good toughness and excellent armour saves, Necromantic spells are excellent as not even a single spell allows an armour save and toughness doesn’t matter in many of them either. Wind of Death has grown to be my favorite spell of all time mainly because it has no range and can travel 2D10" from any edge of the table (At the beginning of the battle is the best time to use it because it can be launched from the side of the battlefield and cause survear damage to the enemy.I did this against chaos one time and killed Egrimm van Horstman on the first turn, left his chaos dragon with 2 wounds and killed one chaos warrior).
Skaven- No army is as annoying as Skaven. Firstly if you think that your opponents is going to have a lot of Grey Seers, especially the Vermin Lord then you are going to have to take some anti magic things.Bufo’s hex scroll is my favorite one (have you ever imagined a necromancer lord on a manticore fighting a Vermin Lord TOAD). There are many other good ones such as The hungry maw, Magic mirror, hypnotic eye scroll, mystic maze, and the mystic shield of Brag. You have to realise that the key to Skaven is their numbers. With out the huge regiments of Skaven an Undead army would have a field day, because even a Skaven warlord only has a Ld of 7. Try and destroy the characters with spells and magic items and then leave it up to your wraiths to finish off the rest. Taking mummies is a big risk against Skaven unless you can find out a way to quickly rid yourself of the almost inevitable warpfire flame thrower teams. One way to solve this is by getting a zombie dragon a destroy them all before they get too close. Don’t try a huge clash of h-t-h as Skaven will almost definitely win with numbers. Skaven spells can be very deadly especially curse of the horned rat and cracks call, luckily for you they mostly have relatively short ranges so you get a chance to attack them with your own magic before they can harm you with their own. Gutter runners and Snikch can cause tremendous troubles to your screaming skull catapults and can then out flank you. To stop this from happening you can deploy a small unit as a rear guard to help support your flank and artillery or you could not take artillery. Another way of stopping them is called curse of years. This spell can kill a whole unit with one dice roll with only a 5 or 6 needed. One way of neatly disposing of any ultra powerful characters is with the hell fire sword, frost blade or executioners axe. Curse of years is also an excellent way of destroying huge regiments.

Combos of Magic Items
Below is a list of different combos of magic items that I might use in a battle. I have written why they are good in Italic.

Potion of Strength + Frostblade with a vampire lord That is 4 S10 hits that kill if just one wound is inflicted.
Mummy tomb king with tomb kings crown + blessed sword* This gives every Undead model within 12" (I can usually fit my whole army to be within 12")of the mummy tomb king gets Ws10 ever seen a skeleton beat a chaos lord in H-T-H ?
A Necromancer, Liche, or Vampire on a flying monster with Staff of Damnation This model can fly high first turn and then use staff of damnation to make him charge anywhere on the board in the magic phase. This is good if the monster causes terror because if it lands just next to war machines the crew will flee off the table.
A regiment with the hell banner + is led by the army standard bearer with the Banner of Doom includes a champion with the skull wand of kaloth If the champion was in the regiment that charged then it should issue a challenge with the most powerful character that it can find. For every hit that it does against this character, the enemy character will be forced to make a Ld test with -3 to its leader ship and if it fails it dies automatically. This is especially good against Skaven because even a grey seer or a warlord has to make a Ld test with a Ld of 4 and if they fail then they are taken out of the game.
A Necromancer or Liche or Vampire lord on a Zombie dragon with blessed sword + the cursed book. I love this combo as it means that is you have a Ws10 you need a 6 to hit in H-T-H and if you have less than Ws10 you can’t hit at all.
A Vampire lord on an Emperor dragon with the sword of destruction The vampire lord can go on an almost unstoppable rampage.
A Necromancer Lord with book of Nagash + skull staff + a spell familiar + Claw of Nagash this Necromancer lord has a 2+ dispel against level 4 wizards and a 3+ dispel vs. lvl 5 wizards. He can also have 6 spells which he can use to guarantee any 2 necromantic spells or any 1 colour or dark magic spells, he can find out what magic items are within 12" of him and he can kill just about anyone within 6".

A Wraith Lord with the sword of destruction in a regiment with the banner of arcane protection This is the champion that I put in the same unit as Nagash. The reason that he is so good is simple - he can’t be killed -.

Choosing your spells
I love using magic and I love killing things with magic (This is why I have Nagash + 6 other necromancers). When I choose magic I always give Nagash 5 necromantic spells (I always try to give him Hand of Dust, Gaze of Nagash, Wind of death, The Curse of years and one of the summon skeleton spells).
For the rest of my army I take the remaining necromantic spells, about 5 dark magic spells, 5 amethyst and as many grey magic spells as I can. The reason that I can take so many wizards in one battle is that me and my friends often play battles with an unlimited number of points (except the usual character, warmachines, monsters and regiment allowances still apply).

Regiments-Undead regiments can be devastating in hand to hand combat some times or can be an absolute disaster other times. The secret to regiments is large numbers..................of characters (and troops)

Skeletons-Skeletons are the backbone of an Undead army (they are very cheap too) arm them with shield, heavy armour, and two hand weapons (not two handed weapons). This will turn them into

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld
4	3	2	3	3	1	2	2	5

with 4+ save, fear, combat abilities for 13pts each. Always have at least one regiment of about 30 skeletons. Make sure you have some skeletons ready for the three raising the dead spells.

Zombies-Expensive to buy. Zombies will just about always break and be destroyed unless you give them a leadership boosting magic item such as crown of command, or an item which improves there battle results. Half the cost of skeletons, is good so is fear but their stats won’t make it by themselves.

Ghouls-Same as Zombies. They are simply not good enough to have in your army. Even with 2 attacks, fear, and toughness 4 skeletons are a much better deal.

Wraiths-What can I say, Wraiths have everything. TERROR! ETHERAL! 2 attacks,plus much more, The only problem is there cost (both points and money). In one battle that I played I had a wraithlord with sword of destruction in a unit with the banner of arcade protection.(It could not be killed).

Wights-Wights are really just half of a wraith, half the points cost, half the attacks and half the number of special rules. Ld 8 is very good and a unit of these with their special wightblades will strike fear into any opponents mind.

Carrion- Carrion are good at attacking gun crew but that is their only real benefit unless chasing and cutting down fleeing opponents is your type of game.

Ghosts-Who can afford these? They are decent troops but due to their high cost ($10 each) large regiments are just too expensive.

Cavalry- A large regiment of skeleton cavalry with lances, barding*, heavy armour* and shield with the banner of shielding led by a necromancer lord and army standard bearer with the doom rider banner will be completely unstoppable, As this gives them automatic hits when charging and a 1+ armour save. Try including a wraithlord with the sword of destruction.

Mummies- W4!!!!! How can you go wrong? A large group of mummies such as 10 with double handed weapons and heavy armour. 40 wounds! and Strength 5! Always include at least a few mummies.

Special Characters

Nagash- Nagash is awesome. I don’t know anything else which is so evil. I can’t understand why people think Teclis is better than him. It is a pity that Nagash’s magic items are compulsory but the ones he has aren’t so bad. His stats. say it all. Being a level 5 wizard Nagash can have 5 spells I usually give him 5 necromantic spells as they are so destructive. As Nagash is your general be very careful with him, he is not invincible (some times).

Vlad von Carstein-Possibly one of the best all round characters in the game. Level 3 Wizard, Carstein Ring, Hydra sword

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld
6	8	6	7	6	4	9	4	10

and possibly Hatred and Frenzy, he is a legend. Giving Vlad a Hydra sword means that he can cause up to 24 Strength 7 hits per h-t-h round.

Isabella von Carstein-Isabella is quite a capable character on her own. Never doubt her abilities. Give her the Frostblade and black amulet and she is a killing machine. Never suicide her to get Vlad psycho, this doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t be mounted in a chariot* and full speed ahead just remember how many points she costs.

Manfred von Carstein- he is a necromancer lord with vampire stats. Because of this he is very costly. I prefer Nagash for a general.

Heinrich Kemmler- Heinrich is a necromancer lord with a 60pt deduction just for looking so cool. When I use him I arm him with magic enhancing magic items. I usually give him Skull staff, Chaos tomb blade, power scroll and dispell scroll. The best value general for an army.

Arkhan the Black- Arkhan’s chariot has scythes a manticores head 2d6 attacks plus it can fly and it is still cheaper than a normal chariot. Because I play where his banner can be a magic one (What’s the use of having a banner if it is not magic)* I always give Arkhan the Hell Banner and the Skull Wand of Kaloth if even 3 of his weaponskill 7 attacks hit you can say good-bye to a bloodthirster.

Settra-Settra like any tomb king should be armed with blessed sword and tomb kings crown. This gives any Undead models within 12" weaponskill 10*. If you do give him these don’t get him into hand-to-hand combat unless you absolutely have to. Settra really should lead mummies.

Krell Lord of Undead- Krell is a good hand-to-hand fighter but I wouldn’t use him as my general. He is good to use to lead units like mummies and skeletons. The model looks great.

Dieter Helsnicht-Many people don’t like Dieter, but if you are going up against a tough army and need a mounted character to do a lot of damage then Dieter is the person your looking for ( In the battle report in White Dwarf 174, Dieter kills 8 Knights of the White Wolf, Empire General, Battle standard bearer and an amethyst Wizard Lord all in one turn). Dieter is also a necromancer lord so he is expensive at about 700 pts, try not to have him flying high for long if at all.

War Machines

Screaming skull catapult- These are cheap and effective. Against Orcs and Goblins or Skaven these are excellent and against tough opponents like Chaos or Dwarves the no armour save is great. Taking three or four of these only cost 200-300 pts and will work with well with each other. The more the merrier or should I say scarier.

Chariot- One problem that many people have when playing with Undead chariots is that they don’t know whether to charge forward or hold back for a final dash at the end. I prefer to go straight in as fast as possible unfortunately this means that my chariots are not as effective as a final dash at the end could be but if you go straight in you can wipe out a few enemy and then later you have the option of raising the same chariots from the dead. and mounting a surprise attack on the flank of the enemy.

Any thing marked with a (*) may not be totally legal but me and my friends allow this as a sort of house rule

This was written by David Linacre