Undead

[Brummbär]

As I am thinking about rebasing my 15mm Undead KoW-Army, I wondered if there is maybe already an idea for classification of undead troops...
Here is what I have at the moment:

IMG_E8247k.jpg (468.93 KiB) Viewed 5166 times

For example: how would you classify bases of wolves? Or ghosts? Or...

[David Kuijt]

Nice!

For wolves, or ghosts, or undead, or left-handed sticklebacks, the approach is the same: figure out how they fight, and put them in that bucket.

Zombies -- Horde. Ponderous and cheap; if you want the feel of unending masses just deploy them in two lines (which you'll probably need to do anyway). You can make them even cheaper by adding the "Fierce" battle card that makes them advance after combat. They're already as slow as you can go, so no use to have the Slow battle card.

Armored Zombies or other effective ponderous undead -- Elite Foot with the Slow battle card would work well. If you want more of them, use Heavy Foot with the Slow battle card. Since "size of army" is usually a desire for most Necromancers when shopping, I'd probably go with Heavy Foot with Slow, or Slow and Fierce both.

Ghosts -- how do they fight? If they are special untouchable unkillable that do damage by fear, they might be the attack method and not the combat stand -- like a spell. With fantasy sometimes you need to tell yourself "not everything is a troop stand."

Wolves -- javelin cavalry with "slow" battle card and "fierce" battle card and "Woodland creatures" battle card works very well. Slow makes them 6mu (JavCav are normally 8); Fierce makes them advance after combat if they win and unable to disengage from combat. Woodland creatures makes them ignore combat and movement penalties in Woods, and treat Wooded Hills as regular Hills. (Line of sight and command control are not changed, though).

Total army makeup -- there are millions of things that work really well in the Undead genre for Rabble -- skeletons climbing out of the ground, for example. Rabble become an important addition if you have an army of cheap Horde and cheap Heavy Foot.

In your image I see Artillery -- easy.

Skeleton Archers -- what you make them depends upon how well you want them to shoot. Shoot crappy? (no aim for the undead...) -- Bow Levy straight up. Shoot better, but not as good as Archers? You could make those Bow Levy with the Shower Shooting battle card if you wanted them to be not-as-good as Archers. Good shooting, dangerous? You could make them Archers with the Slow battle card, or even straight up Archers if you wanted your skellies to be moving at the same rate as other skellies in your army (it's fun and easy if all the skellies move at 3mu, and all the zombies at 2mu, for example). Or put some undead spearmen or shieldmen in front of them and call them Pavise.

The one unit of Grim Reapers you could rate as lots of different things, depending on what you wanted. Raiders would require no rebasing. Elite Foot would be a natural as well. Since it is a special unit, you might add "Deadly" battle card to make them shine as one of the toughest (and more expensive) stands in your army.

If you wanted to avoid rebasing, I'd rate the green ghost knights as Cataphracts, and the guys behind them maybe as Knights to be different. The other guys behind them with greatswords probably Elite Foot.

The Corpse Collector is a great Behemoth -- use the Elephant rules. There are (currently) rules for Tall monsters (changing Line of Sight and terrain slightly) but the visual scale looks like it wouldn't be necessary for that guy -- the Tall rules are intended for really tall stuff, not just dudes that are 15-20' or so to their misshapen humpback. If you wanted him to be the biggest baddest thing in your army, make him Deadly and Tough -- but as a Behemoth (Elephant) he'd already be a concentrated bit of ugly in your army.

Nice paint job on the Dragon's wings. The Dragon is the most complicated -- Behemoth, Flying, Deadly would be a good start. Whether or not you give it a breath weapon depends upon whether you see its breath weapon as something really long range or not. Dragons in Harry Potter would shoot their breath weapon only at targets within 10-20 yards (same as throwing weapons -- so part of close combat calculation). Dragons in Game of Thrones or Smaug in Peter Jackson's Hobbit would use their breath weapons at much greater ranges.

Whatever you do, you're going to have to either use temporary rebasing (sabots) or rebase completely, because you've got three different widths for your bases. Although the four characters in the center might not need rebasing -- one aspect of the fantasy rules we're working on is the inclusion of individuals (characters, "powers"). They'd be based upon circular 1mu bases -- square individual bases would be close enough.

[Brummbär]

Hi David,

thanks for your thoughts!
A lot of good starting points for me - and: I will rebase everything to the standard 4cm of 15mm. This army was used for Kings of War, which we played with 15mm minis.
My Dwarves and High Elves are already done for Triumph!

The dragon wings...
...thanks but that beast came prepainted - it is one of the D&D Attack Wing dragons.
And I agree: they did a fine job there

For the battle cards: guess you are referring to cards which are "in the works" for the fantasy adaption, right?
Really looking forward for this to come out!!!

Again: thanks!

[David Kuijt]

If you've already decided to rebase, you have a lot of freedom. Just top of my head, consider this approximate makeup:

• Zombies: Horde, Fierce. 1.5 points each. Maybe 12 stands or more -- looks like one of your current zombie stands would make at least two Zombie Horde stands for Triumph.
• Skeleton Archers: Bow Levy. 2 pts each. Say 10 stands (split your current stands in two -- ignore the 3-fig basing and put whatever you like in)
• Wolves: JavCav, Slow, Fierce, Woodland Creatures. 4 stands
• Reapers in black: Raiders, Deadly. 1 stand.
• Armored Whatever Foot (in gray): Heavy Foot, Slow. Looks like 24 figs? That'll get you 6 stands of Heavy Foot. Don't have to go with Fierce -- you'll get frustrated with your undead horde if EVERYONE follows up when they win.
• Dead Knights: Cataphracts. 3 stands of 4 figs per base (or you could go with 4 stands of 3, if you like the look better)
• Artillery -- Artillery.
• Corpse Stealer: Elephant. Perhaps with Deadly and Tough.
• Dragon: Elephant, Flying, Deadly, maybe Shower Shooting for breath weapon
• Knights (back right): Knights. 2 stands.
• Greatswordsmen (back right): Elite Foot. 3 stands?
• Ghost: depends. I'd base it on a mounted stand (40x30) and rate it as Elite Cavalry or Horsebow, Flying, Tough (makes it more resistant to missile fire). If it was on a 40x30 base you could play with a number of ratings before deciding for sure what you liked best.

[David Kuijt]

My Dwarves and High Elves are already done for Triumph!

Cool.

For the battle cards: guess you are referring to cards which are "in the works" for the fantasy adaption, right?

Yup. Most of the battle cards are pretty solid, although the point values might still change with further testing.

[Brummbär]

Thanks!!!

[Rod]

I have been threatening to do a video discussion on the Fantasy Battle Cards.

Maybe time to do that.

[Brummbär]

Absolutely

[Lembit Tohver]

I would definitely look forward to a video discussion about the cards.

[Rod]

Ok, maybe we can do a run down on the various cards.