• It's time once again to ferret out those murderous vampires in a new VAU - Vampires Amongst Us. A cross between Cluedo and a roleplay, sometimes gory and often hilarious! Find out more and sign-up! here.

Scalenex

Ghoul
Mar 6, 2012
155
I only played Siege Battles with Lizardmen so far. I imagine undead do good on offense with the help of Blenders.

I imagine defense is challenging. If a section is not breached, zombies with IoN could probably hold off an attack indefinitely, but a breached section seems hard to hold with any undead.

I imagine as defenders or attackers that you'd want all your Core to be Ghouls, for the double attacks (and since zombies or Skeletons would not be able to hold a breached section). I figure attackers would great weapon Grave Guard and Vargheists and defenders would want Grave Guard with sword and board and Crypt Ghouls.

I imagine defenders would go crazy with Lore of Vampires and attackers would want to focus on relatively low magic with some Shadow.

With Undead Legions, I imagine the main difference is attackers and defenders can take catapults and you have easy access to the Lore of Light. Necrotects and Tomb Princes/Kings would be handy for buffing units. The rest of the new stuff seems kind of weak in Siege.

If no one has any first-hand experience I can throw some theoryhammer on it based on what I've seen with Lizardmen.
 
Last edited:

Nagash Worshiper

Black Knight
Dec 24, 2014
309
Tomb Prince with cheap unit x 3 for as many sections with objectives as you can field. Don't add the Prince with the assault party if there's anything killy attacking.
Mix in ethereal units in every section so when an attacker who doesn't have magical attacks assault a section you draw your party from them.
Can Black Knights walk throu the walls for then I would definitely keep a unit ready.
A Lore of Vampire caster would be handy in raising troops on the walls.

The mechanics are so different when playing siege, basically another game! Plz let us know how it goes!
 

Scalenex

Ghoul
Mar 6, 2012
155
This is my theoryhammer tactica. I haven't playtested it because finding players willing to try Siege is a slow process

Very Brief Summary of How Siege Works


In case you don’t have Blood in the Badlands and want to follow this anyway here is a quick and dirty summary.

Each side buys equipment with a points allowance equal to their army size from a short list in the Blood in the Badlands Book. A 2500 points army thus has 2500 points of defending or attacking siege equipment. Siege equipment tends to be expensive so one tends to get far more mileage out of your regular points than your Siege points. For instance 2500 points might get you two siege towers and one battering ram.

The game starts out with the defenders losing some casualties to a starvation roll. Each model has a 1 in 3 chance of losing a wound. Even the undead have to do this. Either their necromantic magic is fading or they have a shortage of brainz. Since take a wound will kill a ghoul and inconvenience a crypt horror, this provides an added incentive to taking multi-wound defenders (though one wound infantry are still very efficient defenders point for point).

Then the defenders roll dice (based on their artillery and “Sally Forths” purchased as Siege Equipment) to try to remove attackers’ artillery and the attackers roll dice based on both artillery and “Undermines” purchased as Siege equipment to try to take out defending artillery and breach the walls.

Each tower, gate or Fortress section is treated like a connected building with a small number of exceptions.

-At the beginning of the game, the defending side can split any unit in half and put them in different (adjacent) sections.
-Attacking from the outside penalizes the WS and I of the attackers by half rounded down unless they fly, have a siege tower, or are attacking from an adjacent fortress section
-Any unit can occupy a building, even if they aren’t normally allowed to occupy buildings (though cavalry/chariots and the like still needs to dismount to fight so they are really subpar fighters)
-Adjacent sections controlled by a friendly side add CR to combats. This is an exception to the normal rule that nothing but casualties counts for CR.
-Friendly units in adjacent sections can use their move to switch places with each other.
-Every unit without a missile weapon gets a drop rocks stand and shoot even if they are undead and/or have BS 0.
-War machines can share towers or gates with another unit. The war machines auto-die if the building section is lost.
-Breaches mean the losing side is pushed out without break test, though unlike losing a break test they aren’t wiped out (this is usually little consolation to the unit).

There are three tokens placed on the Fortress (at least one placed by both player). The attacker automatically wins if they can take all three within five turns.

The defender wins if they hold on to two tokens or they get a relief force of at least five models to enter the Fortress through a gate.

If the attacker has two tokens then the winner is determined by victory points. In most cases this means the attacker wins, unless the attacker is using Zap Brannigan tactics.

A typical fortress has four towers, two wall sections, and one gate (though you can have more or less than this based on what’s available or what the countries agree on). Wall section and towers have pretty much the same game effects but some defensive equipment is specified as only for towers. The gate lets the controller move troops through it as if were open ground. Gates are also slightly easier to breach than other sections (requiring a 5+ on breaching attempts rather than a 6+).


How to Assault a Fortress with the Undead


There are three things you need to do. If a piece of siege equipment or a unit you want to take doesn’t do one of these three things, it’s dead weight.

First: you want to take the fortress sections in close combat as quickly as possible. At LEAST half of your points should go here.

Second you want to block the relief force from entering the gate. You can do this with one good unit. You don’t want to spend more than 20% of your points on models to do this, probably far less than that. If you are very confident that you can take the gate(s) quickly, you don’t have to worry about the relief force coming through it at all though that is a gamble.

Third, you want to breach as many sections as you can. This ties directly into objective number one. You don’t have to actually kill all the defenders if you can push them out. Once evicted, an enemy unit’s odds of recapturing a lost section are pretty low.

At least 90% of your battles will be building assaults, so standards do not provide you +1 to CR. Unless you are packing a magic standard, don’t bother with Standards at all. Since you want to maximize attacks, unit champions are a must. Musicians are okay, but if you have to trim a few points from your army, they should be the first things to go.

Attack Force and Breaching Force

They is only one realistic Core option for attacking forces: Ghouls. A unit ghouls gets 20 poisoned attacks every rounds. Skeletons, Direwolves, and especially zombies will not make much of a dent in fortress defenders. If you are playing with Undead Legion rules, you still want ghouls to make up most/all of your Core. Even with Arrows of Aseph letting you ignore the hard cover of fortress defenders

Horse units CAN enter fortress sections but they still have to dismount to fight, so that pretty much rules out cavalry, monstrous cavalry and chariots as a viable choice. Sorry.

You definitely want your strongest block to be carrying the Banner of Eternal Flame and you probably want to send your strongest force to take the gate. I am hard pressed to think of a better unit to use as your main attacking block than Grave Guard (though I guess Tomb Guard could work almost as well if you are playing Undead Legions).

I’d be tempted to say that all your points spent on non-Core, non charater models should go towards Grave Guard, but I can see a case for Crypt Horrors or Vargheists. Vargheists because they fly, so they can attack fortress sections unaided without penalty without relying on Siege equipment. Crypt Horrors can’t deal out damage as fast as Ghouls, but they can take hits better. If your opponent has strong missile troops, you can deploy your Crypt Horrors to fight them (since the attackers deploy after all the defenders are down). A Varghulf could work too but they are a bit pricey in terms of points for their attack value.

If you are running Undead Legions, Ushabti could provide adequate attacks. They aren’t as resilient as Crypt Horrors or as flexible as Vargheists, but they hit at Strength 6. Offense beats defense as Siege attackers. Siege defenders only need to outlast you, not destroy you. As the attacker you should very rarely lose any one to crumbles. This makes Morghasts a somewhat weak addition to your attacking forces though their attack profile isn’t bad. Warsphinxes with fire breath are a good option too, but I'm not sure how useful they will be the round(s) after they use their fire breath.

If you have points you are having trouble trying to spend, consider a Terrorgheist. They are a damaging power house and they can shoot into melee which is nice. Problem is they are a lot of points in one package. If the defenders have decent ranged attacks they can concentrate fire on your T-bats and take them out in the pre-battle phase. If you are playing an army with poor shooting, there is almost nothing they can do to get your T-bats.

You can attack a fortress section with multiple units. Monsters take up the slot of 5 infantry and Monstrous Infantry take up the slots of 3 infantry. A mixed Monstrous/infantry assault can help you maximize killing power if your infantry is seriously potent (a vampire or wight). Otherwise 3 Crypt Horrors and 1 Ghoul (with lots of step up) is just going to feed the enemy free CR.

Your attack forces should have blenders, at least a few. While Ghouls and Grave Guard aren’t bad, you really need vampires and wights to spearhead your offenses.

Cairn Wraiths and Banshees have decent damage output for a fairly low points cost, but it’s relatively easy for defenders to move fighting characters around when they want to, so the odds of your ethereal characters getting a magic weapon in the face are relatively high.

If you are playing Undead Legion, you can use Tomb Princes or Tomb Kings to boost WS of large units. Just make sure the unit in question has a Siege Tower. Without the Siege Tower the WS penalty for attackers will make the “My Will be Done” power of the Tomb Monarchs a lot less sexy.

Necrotects are probably a better deal for your points since they bestow Hatred on units they join. Every building assault is technically a separate combat so the fact that Hatred only works for the first round is not an issue. That means re-rolls every round as long as the Necrotect lives. That’s a lot of bang for your buck whether or not you have anything else boosting the unit.


Stopping the Relief Force


In my first Siege battle as attackers, I was winning until the relief force sneaked in. The relief force might roll late to arrive and in a poor spot, but you can’t count on that. You have to be ready to deal with the contingency of the enemy relief force arriving where and when the defenders want them.

Don’t make my mistake, a unit needs five models to trigger the auto-win. A chariot can hurt your attacking blocks, but it can’t trigger an auto-win. A block of infantry won’t move fast enough to get through the gate. The main things you have to worry about are skirmishers and fast cavalry. Don’t worry about hitting the other relief forces until all the units capable of triggering an auto-win are dead. A unit needs to be five models strong to trigger an auto-win so you can leave a mobile target alone once they get knocked below that.

If you choose a Hasty Assault, the Relief Force has almost no chance of making it through the gate. This means your enemies have half the starvation rolls and you get half the siege equipment. It’s a tough choice, but it might be worth it Blenders are so efficient at the scaling the wall you don’t need as much Starvation and Siege Equipment to get the job done.

Tactically if you can take the Gate and hold it, the relief force can’t get in. Any siege defender is probably going to put their toughest unit here so you are going to want to put a high concentration of your forces here if you have no other anti-relief force contingency.

Unless your luck is really bad, you pretty much only need to stall the relief force once. If you don’t have enough Ghoul models to fill your entire Core percentage, you can plant a giant block of zombies across from the gate and keep most relief forces at bay. Another option to stall would be Spirit Hosts but you are in serious trouble if the relief force can bring magical attacks to bear.

Terrorgheists and Vargheists are not the most efficient Siege attackers but they are fast and tough. If you keep them sort of near the gate for the early rounds of your attack, you can have them break away from the attack force to intercept and kill the relief force though that leaves a lot to chance.


Conventional Magic

Relative to regular scenarios, I believe undead siege attackers can get away taking relatively little magic.

The Lore of Vampires is slightly less shiny than in normal games. You are the attacker, you set up after the defender sets up. You initiate most of the close combats, not the defenders. You do not need Invocation of Nehek to rebuild damage units nearly as much as you do in a conventional battle. You want a little bit of the Lore of Vampires to heal your characters with the Lore attribute (since the characters will be doing your heavy lifting) but you don’t need to go crazy with it.

The Lore of Death is way less shiny. Purple Suns use templates and templates are less effective against units in building. Hero snipes are hard to set off because the important characters are likely to be scattered in different places around the enemy fortress.

I don’t know if Shadow becomes a must have, but it is certainly handy. Pit of Shades and the Penumbral Pendulum won’t do much but all the other spells should you make taking building sections easier.

I’d say the Cursed Book is a good idea. All six of the spells can make assaulting fortress sections easier.

Unconventional Magic

If you are playing Undead Legion, I don’t see the Lore of Nehekhara helping much. Its main claims to fame are boosting movement and shooting. Both the movement and shooting phase are pretty marginal for Siege Attackers.

Unless you are taking Nagash or Arkhan the Black, I don’t see the units summoned by Undeath being powerful enough to put a dent in the enemy.

Fire is a tricky case. Flaming attacks reroll to wound against units in buildings which makes fire attractive but it’s difficult if not impossible to shoot magic missiles and direct damage at building sections you are assaulting (Burning Head could work well but not the others). Cascading Fire-Cloak and the Flaming Sword of Rhuin will help a ton and the Fulminating Flame Cage will screw over the relief force, but you are not guaranteed those spells. Unlike normal games, Fireball is not a good consolation prize for rolling a lousy spell so you really need a level four caster or nothing.

Beasts could work on a level one or two caster. Wyssans is guaranteed and it will help you a lot. Curse of Anaheir and the two hero buffs are helpful but the rest of the lore is dead weight. With so many dud spells for this scenario a level four is a bad idea. You pretty much just want Wyssans.

Metal is definitely not worth spending premium points for forbidden lore. Metal is intended to counter well-armored targets. The best armored targets are generally monsters, cavalry, and chariots: three types of units that make very poor siege defenders.

Light is a bit lackluster. There are some really good spells and some really bad ones. Net of Amytok will slow down a relief force, maybe. Speed of Light will help any attack force and Birona’s Timewarp will really help an attack force, but the rest of the lore is dead weight. I would not recommend springing for Forbidden Lore with this, but it’s worth considering if you are playing Undead Legion since you can skip the Forbidden Lore tax by taking a L4 Light Liche Priest.

Heavens attack spells are about inflicting high strength hits on small numbers of units. Usually the siege defenders will be numerous and weak. Comet is good because the entire defending force is stationary. The downside is that the risk of losing models to friendly fire will be high since most of your units will be an inch away from the enemy. Heaven buff and hexes are okay. If you are feeling lucky, Chain Lightning can make it around the whole perimeter of an enemy fortress. Heavens spells are a bit too situational for my tastes. I don’t think it’s quite worth paying the Forbidden Lore tax.

Siege Equipment

Attackers basic options are Hasty Assault, Siege Towers, Battering Rams, Monstrous Battering Clubs, and Undermines. Vampire Counts have the Restless Dead option. If you are playing Undead Legion and are taking Screaming Skull Catapults, you can buy Siege Ammunition.

As mentioned before Hasty Assault is for those REALLY worried about the relief force. If you take Hasty Assault you pretty much don’t have to worry about the relief force at all, but the rest of your work will be harder. It’s also worth noting that a Hasty Assault always costs half your Siege points regardless of whether you are playing a 1000 point game or 5000 point game. The larger the points size of the battle, the greater the opportunity cost of choosing a Hasty Assault.

Siege Towers benefit any attacking unit. Since Siege Towers are the most expensive siege equipment available, you want to think carefully about how and if you want to use them. When are Siege Towers worthwhile? It prevents your attackers from having their Weapon Skill and Initiative cut in half. We don’t have a lot of WS or I so this penalizes us less than other races. If you are fighting a high WS defender (average WS4 for Core) than Siege Towers benefit undead warriors relatively little since their penalty for having their WS and I cut in half is pretty minor, but if you are using the Lore Light or Tomb Princes/Kings to boost your WS Siege Towers become very potent, so basically use Siege Towers for units that include Tomb Princes or Tomb Kings.

Battering Rams are probably the best friend of undead Siege attackers. They are half the cost of a Siege Tower and they are classified as a chariot not a war machine so they can’t be auto-killed in the defending artillery phase. They can kill your Battering Rams with regular shooting which means your foe will have to make a hard choice between shooting your attacking units and shooting the Battering Rams. Best of all you can attempt to breach a section simultaneously while attacking with a unit without penalizing your attackers in any way. I’d advise one battering ram per major attacking unit. If you are feeling bad that your big chariots and monsters are left out of your siege battle you can use them as proxy battering rams. That’s right, a Black Coach is battering your walls! That’s Siege in style!

Battering Clubs do the same thing as Battering rams at half the price—sort of. Monstrous Infantry or Monsters can take this upgrade and forgo their regular attacks to have a small chance of breaching a wall. Essentially it means you split the difference between Siege Points and regular points. Regular points that could be spent on infantry units or characters. Using a Battering Club unit means you have to reduce the size of your Ghoul or Grave Guard assault parties by three or five models. That’s a major downside of Battering Clubs.

There is a major upside to Battering Clubs. A Battering Ram is done all game once it breaches one section (since it can’t maneuver sideways). The advantage of Battering Club troops is they can attempt a breach OR make a conventional assault giving you some flexibility so the troops aren’t worthless after they breach a section, they can head for another section or begin a regular assault. I would not advise taking Monsters or Monstrous Infantry at all unless you plan to take Battering Clubs.

Undermines cost half as much as a battering ram for what amounts for a one six chance of causing a Breach. I don’t like those odds. What I do like is that Undermines take effect BEFORE the main battle phase and they can be targeted at any wall section you choose. While the odds of any one Undermine working are low, there is nothing the defender can do to stop it except pray to the dice gods. Some players like to spend half, most or all of their Siege points on Undermines. I can’t fault that strategy since if you throw enough dice at undermines you’ll probably get something. I just find tunneling under the walls a bit Skaven-y. Personally I find Undermines a fine way to spend the remainder of your points after buying everything else, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to stock up on them.

Very few armies have army specific siege equipment, but Vampire Counts are one of them. Vampire Counts can take Restless Dead. It lets you select an enemy unit and receive a Spirit Host for every 6 they roll on the Starvation roll and place the Spirit Host anywhere you want on the table top, even inside the castle. In most cases a Spirit Host will not do a lot of damage, but MANY Spirit Hosts can do a lot of damage. You can fling Spirit Hosts at any building section not being assaulted at your main troops. If they die? Who cares they were practically free. You can also use them to roadblock any relief force units without magic attacks.

Note that Restless Dead is not weakened when paired with a Hasty Assault since the effect is tied to 6s which are not affected by Hasty Assaults. Also note that the less elite your enemy is, the more valuable this Siege “equipment” becomes. 20 Chaos Warriors will probably yield 2 Spirit Hosts but 60 Night Goblins will probably yield 10 Spirit Hosts. Always Restless Dead at least once when playing Skaven, Empire, or Orcs and Goblins. Against more elite armies, you will need to carefully way this option against your other equipment options.

Tomb King Artillery

If you are playing Undead Legions you have access to the Casket of Souls and Screaming Skull Catapults. Assuming they don’t get destroyed in the pre-battle phase by the defenders, they have a one in 12 chance of breaching a fortress section and a one in 12 chance of auto-killing a defending artillery piece.

If you take Catapults you want to buy the Siege Ammunition for them. That basically gives you a one in six chance of breaching a fortress section every round. Two in six chance if you are lucky enough to have the temple straddle two fortress section. They are Rare, so you can only take two south of grand armies. You definitely want to take two to give yourself a spare in case the defending artillery fire rolls well (since defenders fire first).

The Casket of Souls bound spell is far from worthless for Siege games, but you mostly want to take a Casket for the extra power dice and to draw fire from your Catapults since many players will target Caskets before your Catapults just out of habit. I would not recommend taking a Casket of Souls if you are taking no Catapults. If it’s your only piece of artillery, your odds of losing it in your pre-battle phase are unacceptably high.

If you are playing against Empire or Dwarves the sheer number of defending artillery means you face a very real chance of having all your artillery killed in the pre-battle phase before you can use it, so do not take any artillery if against them if you are risk averse.


How to Defend a Fortress with Undead


Attacking forces and defending forces generally favor highly different builds but there are some commonalities. The biggest difference is while an attacking force can almost pretend that crumble doesn’t exist, a defender should be thinking about minimizing crumble with every selection in the list building and every action they take. Even if you have never taken one in a regular game, now is the time to take a BSB. It’s not hard to cover an entire fortress in your 12 inch radius and you’ll want a few fighting vampires or wights anyway.

You can win in theory by bleeding the attacking force dry, but your primary goal is to simply survive. Your secondary goal is to prevent breaches.

You either to need to hold out for five turns or get a relief force unit through your Gate. This means holding the Gate should be your top short term goal.

At least 90% of your battles will be building assaults, so standards do not provide you +1 to CR. Unless you are packing a magic standard, don’t bother with Standards at all. Since you are probably going to be casting IoN like crazy, unit champions are a must for tying up enemy characters in repetitive challenges. Musicians only work in the case of a tie, and generally the enemy will be attacking in overwhelming force, but I recommend giving your Grave Guard musicians since they will probably be defending (or retaking) your all-important gate.

Basic Defenders

Many armies have one or two units that seem to be obvious defenders. Vampire Counts are not one of them.

At quick glance it is tempting to fill your castle with absurd numbers of zombies. Just keep up casting bubbled Invocation of Nehek over and over again for five turns, that will keep all but the most elite attackers right? No, zombie spam only works if you have no breaches at all. If the attackers win CR in a breached section, they take the building automatically without a break test. The defenders are not killed, they are pushed out. That’s little consolation with zombies, since zombies outside your building sections either outside the castle or in the courtyard are almost literally useless.

Since Starvation rolls are going to hit all your units, the fact that zombies can be raised above their starting unit is not really a factor. With one sixth or one third of your models going pop in the pre-battle battle phase, it will be hard to raise any unit to their starting value.

Skeletons have WS2 (which comes into play if the enemy’s WS is cut in half for attacking without a Siege Tower) and they have reasonable saves with their armor and shields. They are still too easily beaten and driven out in cases of a breach.

You probably want Ghouls for your Core. With two poisoned attacks, they stand a reasonable chance of winning CR when backed by a Vampire, Wight, Necrotect, Tomb Prince, or Tomb King and they just might bleed an attacking unit down to the nubs through attrition (assuming you can keep the Ghouls healthy with IoN)

Zombies don’t work defending a breach and it’s almost impossible to prevent ALL breaches, but if you can prevent MOST breaches, you theoretically alternate deployment between zombies and not zombies and use your ability to swap units around to remove the zombies from liability positions. No plan survives contact with the enemy though. You can run into complications if unit swapping pulls characters out of position or if the enemy is concentrating their forces on two adjacent sections.

Your gate should probably defended by Grave Guard, probably with hand weapons and shields versus great weapons. If you have points to spare, a second unit of Grave Guard (with the Banner of Eternal Flame) waiting in a side fortress section or standing in your courtyard can be waiting on standby to counter-attack a fortress section that you lose. Remember, flaming attacks only provide a bonus to the attacking force in building combat, so there is little reason to give your force defending the gate flaming attacks unless you are expecting them to make a counter-attack on something.

Crypt Horrors are another good elite basic defender. They should not be defending your gate because the gate attackers probably have (Regeneration negating) flaming attacks, but very few armies can give more than one or two units flaming attacks so they are good for holding regular fortress sections. With their multi-wound profiles and Regeneration saves, they can emerge from the Starvation phase virtually unscathed.

Wights and Blenders, or mini-blenders are a good idea to sprinkle about your defending units, as are spell casters. Since you can nominate which models fight and which ones don’t, you don’t need to go nuts distributing defensive items to your necromancers. They don’t have to fight at all until their bunker goes below ten models (and necromancers can leave doomed units).

If you are playing Undead Legions, very few non-Vampire Counts units can provide good basic defenders though Tomb Princes, Tomb Kings, and Nectrotects can make any unit of basic defenders a lot nastier.

Proactive Defenders

By proactive defenders I mean units that are primarily intended to kill attackers rather than hold ground.

There is nothing wrong with using entirely basic defenders but some proactive defenders wouldn’t be amiss unless you are playing against an opponent with zero artillery.

If you are playing Vampire Counts, your proactive defenders will be probably waiting in your courtyard to go charging out the gate or flying over the walls.

Even if you somehow lose control of your gate on round one, you can still have some Hex Wraiths waiting just by the gate in deployment. They either exit the gate or making a flaming run through the enemy and then b-line towards the nearest artillery. They can’t prevent pre-battle phase fire and you can only knock out artillery in turn two at best, but it’s a fairly cheap way to remove a threat to breach you. Killing any artillery is a good idea, but focus on rock lobbers and cannons first because these things are probably packing siege ammunition if your opponent knows what’s he’s doing.

Spirit Hosts can float out your castle and tie things up, but in most cases you want the more maneuverable Hex Wraiths. Fell Bats and Vargheists aren’t half bad for flying out and attacking war machines or poorly defended wizards. They are a bit pricey for their wound count, but as multi-wound models, they are less vulnerable to Starvation rolls than the rest of your army mitigating the cost a bit, especially if you can toss them an Invocation of Nehek. If you are playing with Undead Legions, units with Entombed Beneath the Sands should be able to make attacks on your enemies vulnerable back line with roughly the same efficiency as flyers.

You could theoretically have knights or a Black Coach waiting to launch out of your gate but you are probably are better off with flyers or ethereals, especially since knights would be devastated by an unlucky Starvation roll. If you really want a heavy hitter waiting in your courtyard, a Terrorgheist is probably your best bet since it doesn’t have to attack out the gate. As tough as they are, a Terrorgheists is going to be awfully exposed as soon as it leaves the confines of your fortress.

Arguably the best thing to have in your courtyard would be a Mortis Engine . It takes a mere slap on the wrist during the Starvation phase. It will be very difficult for the enemy to kill with artillery since it has walls around it, you can bestow Regeneration on pretty much your whole army by turn one and you will probably be smacking most of the enemy army by turn 2 or 3.

The Mortis Engine comes with some limitations. It’s hard to use the banshee scream before you have lost a building section. Since any player with a basic understanding of Siege will take any and all possible means of producing flaming attacks, the Regeneration saves will not be as useful as normal. While a Mortis Engine is very hard to kill, you are putting all your eggs in one basket. If it is killed it’s going to hit all your defenders a lot more than it will hurt the attacking forces since you will be have on the bottom end of the attrition fights. In fact, I dare saying killing a Mortis Engine in the courtyard practically triggers an auto-win for the attackers.

If you are playing Undead Legions you definitely want to max out on Screaming Skull Catapults. They get to fire first in the pre-battle phase before the attackers, so they amount to a free chance to knock out enemy artillery and they are very well protected since a tower or gate can have a war machine share space with an infantry unit. While we are on the subject of artillery, I will not fault you for taking a Casket of Souls for the power dice, but try to stick it on a back corner. An artillery piece can share a space with an infantry unit, but the artillery auto-dies if the section is captured, so you don’t want the Casket of Souls exploding on your entire defending force.

I am unsure if Morghasts are a good idea. The anti-crumble power is sure to come in handy. They are a bit too good at hitting things for me to want to leave them alone in the courtyard. They don’t have the points to wound ratio I’d prefer to put them in a building section to fend off attackers (especially since they can’t rebuild lost wounds with Invocation of Nehek very fast). Maybe they’d work when paired with a fighting infantry character.

Skeleton Archers

Tomb King archer units will not help you much with your Stand and Shoot because their bows are not quick to fire. After turn one, they will have to forgo their bows for dropping rocks, but they can still fire their bows on your shooting phase. Every conventional shooter can fire twice in the pre-battle phase. A Lore of Nehekhara caster can double your shots.

Here’s a fun fact that’s not immediately apparent. Assuming your fortress has a rectangular layout. Every fortress wall section, tower, and gate has line of sight to every other fortress section. Normally hard cover makes conventional shooting worthless against a building section that has fallen to the enemy but with Arrows of Aspeh you can actually do some damage. Your best bet to liberate a lost building section is Grave Guard lead by a fighting character, but mass Arrows of Aseph shooting from several vectors will outperform most other counterattacks you can muster.

The downside is that Tomb King archers are pretty soft targets for fending off close combat attacks. Just like with zombies, you need to use careful positioning to make sure you aren’t trying to defend a breached section with skeleton archers alone.

If you do choose to take Skeleton Archers, I cannot overemphasize how much you want to take Flaming Ammunition from your Defender’s Siege Equipment. That gives you a reasonable chance of taking out Battering Rams, artillery, and even Siege Towers for practically no points.

The Relief Force

Relief forces don’t face starvation rolls but since every point you spend on your relief force arrives at least somewhat late, it may be a viable strategy to only buy a bare bones relief force. When building your army list, you need to decide whether you want to use a minimal sized relief force (roughly 10% of your points), or a strong relief force (roughly 25% of your points). Either way I would not recommend taking characters in your relief force unless they are minimally equipped.

Triggering the Auto-Win with your Relief Force

If you can get a five model unit through a gate you control, you win automatically. If you roll poorly and your relief force arrives fairly late on the wrong table edge, then an auto-win is off the table and a diversionary counterattack is your only consolation prize. When choosing your relief force you need to decide whether you want to optimize the auto-win or optimize your counterattack or try to split the difference.

If your main goal is to trigger the auto-win and you want to conserve points your best bet to to take a few packs of dire wolves. I’d recommend packs of 10 or 15 so they can take a few hits and still trigger the auto win. If you aren’t concerned with saving points in your relief force, I’d recommend units of 10 or 15 Hex Wraiths to try to enter the gate. Yes, Hex Wraiths don’t need to enter through the gate, but they do if you want to trigger the auto-win. And just to reiterate, you can’t trigger an auto-win if your forces don’t control the gate. Note, while the rules say you have to walk through the gate, the rules do not prevent you from using Vanhel’s Danse Macabre or Khar’s Incantation of the Desert Wind to help you do it.

If the dice are not with you, your relief force might arrive at a side wall and thus not facing your gate. If you got a quick relief force roll you might have enough time to loop your force around to the gate. If not, your relief force cannot trigger an auto-win. This means the best you can hope for is a relief force to make a game saving diversionary attack on the attacking force.

Counter-Attacking with your Relief Force

Almost any relief force should be able to gut the enemy artillery, but most of the time, the relief force arrives so late that you won’t gain much tactical advantage attacking the artillery that late in the game.

The relief force does not have grappling hooks, so they can retake a lost building section if they don’t fly, so unless your relief force has Vargheists in it, you pretty much out of luck if a building section is already lost. Vargheists can liberate a building section if the enemycaptured it with heavy losses, but you are just throwing good troops after bad if the occupying unit still has a high model count.

Mainly, a counterattack normally only works against an attacking unit that hasn’t taken their building section yet. Crypt Horrors or Varghulfs will not only do a decent job killing attacking units they are so resilient that even if you don’t destroy the attacking units, they can probably tie up an attacker for the rest of the game.

If your only goal is to tie up the attack unit, a Spirit Host is not a bad unit to include in your relief force. If you are trying to conserve points in your relief force, a Spirit Host is practically your only option for your counter attacking force.

Terrorgheists can fly and shoot into melee. That’s a powerful relief unit that could theoretically liberate a lost building section single-handedly. That’s a lot of points for a unit that won’t be with you on round one, so this is an iffy choice for reinforcements.

Splitting the Difference


If you want a relief force that can in theory mount an effective counter attack OR trigger an auto-win you are pretty much committing yourself to a high points value relief force. You can either look at the suggestions for counter attacking forces and gate entering forces and take both or you can take one or more large units of Black Knights.

Black Knights are nearly as maneuverable as Hex Wraiths and nearly as hard hitting as Undead Monsters. That's your combo unit of choice, but make sure you pad their ranks because at least five models need to walk through the gate to trigger the auto-win


Undead Legions

If you are using Undead Legions, I don’t see a lot of incentive to take non-Vampire Count units in your relief force, unless said unit happens to be a fire breathing sphinx, in which case it can stand in for a Terrorgheist (though as a non-flyer a Sphinx cannot liberate a captured building section, only decimate targets outside your castle).


Conventional Magic


The Lore of Vampires is probably going to be the backbone of your defense. Assuming you can keep enemy breaches to a minimum you can fend off attackers for a long time with repeated castings of Invocation of Nehek. Vanhel’s Danse Macabre can help you sneak in your relief force. The rest of the lore isn’t bad, but mostly you want multiple level 1 Lore of Vampire casters for lots of IoN.

Death is risky for defenders. With attackers coming from multiple directions, it’s hard to hero snipe or Purple Sun where and when you need it. If you do decide to take the Lore of Death, put your caster with the unit defending you gate. That’s where your enemy heavy hitters will probably be.

If you still have points left over after spamming your L1 Lore of Vampires casters, feel free to take some Shadow. Pit of Shades and the Penumbral Pendulum will auto-kill enemy artillery piece. The hexes will blunt any attacking unit.

I’d say the Cursed Book is a good idea though Doom and Darkness is not particularly useful (sure they might fail a Fear test, but their WS is usually already being docked), but the other five spells will help a lot.


Unconventional Magic


If you are playing Undead Legion, and you are intent on having your relief force enter the gate, I would recommend a L1 Nehekhara caster. Take the signature spell and you have a cheap spell to expedite a unit through your gate. If you have multiple archer units, you probably want to get Neru’s Incantation of Righteous Smiting to double your shooting phase so you’ll want at least a L4 to give you a reasonable chance of rolling the spell. Neru’s Incantation of Protection is nice because slowing attrition losses is a defender’s top priority and Usehp’s Incantation of Dessication helps the other direction by weakening the enemy (though I prefer Shadow hexes). Cursed Blades isn’t bad for gate defenders/liberators, but the rest of the Lore of Nehekhara is dead weight. All the augments are good because they come with healing and you want all the healing you can get.

Unless you are taking Nagash or Arkhan the Black, I don’t see the units summoned by Undeath being powerful enough to put a dent in the enemy. Since the attackers go first, and start out eight inches away from your walls, road blocking them is almost impossible. The best you can hope for is to summon distracting units behind the enemy to make an attack run on enemy artillery. A no, you cannot have summoned troops walk through the gate to trigger an auto-win, the unit has to be from the relief force which summoned troops would not qualify for, even if summoned by the relief force.

The Lore of Fire is not worth spending Forbidden Lore points on. As the defender you will get a lot fewer opportunities to benefit from flaming attacks than the attacker will. You still want the Banner of Eternal Flame somewhere, but don't go farther than that.

Beasts could work on a level one or two caster. Wyssans is guaranteed and it will help you a lot for minimizing crumble losses. If you can get Curse of Anraheir you are even better off since the enemy will lose a few models from dangerous terrain tests, but the rest of the lore is lackluster if you aren’t packing a whole graveyard full of characters.

Metal is definitely not worth spending premium points for the Forbidden Lore power. Metal is intended to counter well-armored targets. The best armored targets are generally monsters, cavalry, and chariots. Three types of units that make fairly poor siege attackers unless you are fighting Empire (the Steam Tank can be upgraded into a fighting battering ram).

If you are playing Undead Legions and you are not trying a shooting based strategy, I would consider taking a L4 Liche Priest with the Lore of Light. Pha’s Protection, Net of Amytok, Speed of Light, and Birona’s Timewarp are fantastic for Siege defenders with fairly low WS (you). The problem is the rest of the spells in Light are next to useless for you. That means go Level 4 or go without Light. That means Light is probably off the table as a Forbidden Lore choice if you aren't playing as Undead Legions.

Heavens is decent for a L1 or L2 caster and worth taking Forbidden Lore for if your main bases are already covered. Iceshard Blizzard is a great spell for blunting siege attack forces or muzzling war machines. Harmonic Convergence and Curse of the Midnight Wind can help swing battles by a modest margin and save you a crumble casualty or two. The attack spells are a bit too hit or miss (almost literally) to help you much.


Siege Equipment


Defenders you either get one-use items or multi-use items that are attached to buildings. The latter can be captured by the enemy and used against you. Whatever you are considering your “normal” building garrison, make sure your tower upgrades have a bit more than that, assuming you can afford to do that.

Every missile unit you have from mighty Skull Catapults to lowly skeleton archers should be packing flaming ammunition. Even if your relief force has a pittance of shooting (say from TK chariots), they should be packing Flaming Ammuniton to. Granted Flaming Ammunition usually doesn’t work but it costs so few points it’s always worth a try. To get the full benefit you only need a single model to shoot it, so the value actually goes up with piddly shooters like chariots versus say catapults.

Hellgate is also a one use item, but a gate with a breath weapon is powerful. It’s also fairly cheap. You need all the help you can get defending your gate, so I recommend buying one of these. In the unlikely event you have multiple gates, each one should have a Hellgate. I would go as far to say this is the best piece of defending equipment available and would recommend every defending force always take this regardless of who they are playing.

Sally Forths are handy. They may be one-shot items but like Undermines they are used in the prebattle phase. Each Sally Forth has a roughly one in three chance of working rather than a one in six chance of working like their cousin the Undermine. It’s a good way to thin out the herd of artillery, towers, and battering rams. Make sure you target breaching items before you target not breaching items to get maximum use out of these. All else equal, it’s better to take out something pointed at the gate than to take out something pointed at a side wall.

Wizards Tower is a handy tower upgrade. It bestows lore master on every wizard in it. This means you can theoretically stick in Level one or two casters of the Lore of Whatever and be guaranteed to the get the spell you want. Before you fill your castle with Forbidden Lore vampires, let me issue a warning. In a typical Siege game, you will be fending off three or four attacking units. You generally have seven garrisoned fortress sections. That means you will constantly be swapping units around your fortress to swap a nearly dead unit with a healthy undiminished one. When this happens your wizards will get shuffled around and suddenly find themselves outside the wizard tower.

There are a couple ways around the sliding wizard problem. If you just want the Lore Mastery for the Lore Vampires you are pretty safe since you are probably taking lots of low level Vampires casters. If you scattered them around you not only get good coverage from IoN but there will probably always be a caster in the tower. Problem is if you take the Lore of Anything Else, then you probably only have one caster of that lore. If you want your specialists wizards to have lore mastery then I would recommend putting the wizard tower in your back corner (hopefully without an objective marker) and loading it up with a tough defending bunker. This will minimize the odds of the tower being taken or the wizards having to shuffle out. If that’s not your style, you can buy multiple Wizards Tower Upgrades for a reasonable guarantee of holding on to your diverse lore selection.

Cauldrons of Boiling Oil are fairly cheap ways to inflict some effecting shooting casualties. The problem is these things have fairly short range and are one-use items. While it’s very hard for an attacker to avoid them altogether, a cunning foe will at least be able to move his units so you can only clip the corner with the template rather than hitting them dead center. These are a little risky. The less elite your opponent is, the better they become (if you are being massed with large numbers it’s impossible NOT to hit something). On the other hand more elite units can’t afford to take as many hits, so it’s handy either way.

Towers of Blood is available to Force of Destruction Siege Defenders though the benefits can be used by a Force of Order if captured. It bestows Frenzy and Hatred on the building occupants. That’s a nice boost to your elite defenders. This is a good tower upgrade for a pure Vampire Counts force, but if you are running Undead Legions I recommend you field Necrotects instead. A Necrotect, unlike a tower can move around. While a Necrotect can die, it can’t be captured and used by the enemy.

Warded Towers are cheap. While they can only be applied to towers, they are technically not a tower upgrade so you can throw these on your upgraded towers for an extra layer of defense. Warded Towers provide occupants with MR 2. Unless you know for a fact your opponent is really packing tons of magic, these probably not a good buy since an opponent with a small to medium amount of magic will just shoot his direct damage spells at wall sections while sending his infantry at your towers and a warded tower will not help you augments, hexes, or summoned units.

I do not recommend the Witches Cauldron. It’s a tower upgrade that has a one in six chance of inflicting d6 Strength 3 hits on the unit occupying it. Most undead units can take that all day, so that’s not a big risk. The problem is the 5/6 chance of a pay-off is pretty small. A temporary 1 point increase in a randomly determined trait. If the trait in question is not your Attack value or Toughness score, it’s not generally worth much for most undead.
 
Last edited:

Nicreap

Ghoul
Dec 2, 2014
187
Incantation of smiting normally can't make catapults fire twice, is there a special rule for sieges allowing it to do so?

But that it's a great post well explained post.
 

Scalenex

Ghoul
Mar 6, 2012
155
Incantation of smiting normally can't make catapults fire twice, is there a special rule for sieges allowing it to do so?

I was unaware that Incantation of Smiting does not allow catapults to fire twice. No, there isn't a special rule letting them shoot twice. I still think they are a good buy for the pre-battle shooting phase if nothing else. A defending catapult has two one-in-six chances to auto-kill an attacking artillery piece. An attacker has two one-in-six chances to either destroy a defending artillery or breach a wall section (randomly determine which if they roll a 6).
 

Nicreap

Ghoul
Dec 2, 2014
187
Ya, unfortunately it states it gives bows and bows of the desert multishot two, so even the colossus can't fire his bolt thrower twice, just horsemen, archers, chariots and Ushabti. But I agree a chance to auto kill before the game starts is definitely worth considering.
 

About us

  • Our community has been around for many years and pride ourselves on offering unbiased, critical discussion among people of all different backgrounds. We are working every day to make sure our community is one of the best.

Quick Navigation

User Menu