Skellies Or Zombies?

[Draugr]

I am just planning my first VC's army and I am wondering about the composition of my core units.
I read over a few peoples army lists and the general concencus seems to be, go for zombies over skeletons. I was wondering if this was right or not?

In my thinking you can have a skeleton, which has a a point more WS and initiative (though its still very poor and not much use). You also get a 5+ armour save and can have them with spears for free. All for an extra 2 points.

I understtand that zombies are so cheap, you can use massive hordes of them as 'tar pits' to tie up the enemy and set them up for flank charges, or just to keep their elite units out of the battle.
But it is worth paying that bit extra for skellies, that can fight in an extra rank and are much more survivable?

I will note that I love zombies, so will be fielding some big hordes of them anyway!
Would just be interested to hear peoples views on this subject.

 

[Commisarlestat]

I'm planning on taking both. The problem with skellies is a lot of what you pay for is negated. The attacks won't cause much damage and the armour is negated easily. To get the most out of them you need to support them. This takes the form of characters and of buffs. Buffs to strength are hard to come by with our magic as we are often forced into the lore of vamps with our casters. The characters do well anywhere so we don't just have to go for skellies. You harder special units tend to be better bunkers such as grave guard or black knights as you aren't relying on just your character to kill stuff.
If you want to tarpit zombies are just better as they are cheaper and then raising comes into it. Skeletons are more limited in their ability to be raised so can't be replenished as easily.

Essentially skellies aren't that bad on paper compared to zombies but their use in battle changes the list. Zombies work in all lists whereas skeletons IMO need the list built to get the most out of them.

If you are going for an infantry list with a master of the dead and invo spam, or mind razor or mortis engine support with wraiths and vamps they can work.

At the end of the day it is preference and how the list is built that you need to loo at to see if they are worth it.

Hope that helps and those more experienced can flesh this out more clearly!

A

 

[eggsPR]

If u want a cheap bunker, zombies.

If u want a bunker with a champ so that when the (insert giant flying thing here) charges u can challenge with your unit champ and live, then ION the champ again in your turn and live another round, skellies.

If u want a giant tarpit, zombies only only if 40+ bc expect to lose 20+ per turn after crumbling.

If u want a lord/hero delivery system, skellies.

If u want something that can kill stuff on their own, ghouls.

If u want chaff, wolves.

That's about it in a nutshell with our core. It all depends on your gameplay style.

 

[Narenzade]

Zombies are great as a tarpit and bunker for Necromancers.

I generally always take Ghouls as the majority of my core. They're by far our best Core choice and resurrect at the same rate as Skeletons with an additional Toughness.

 

[The Sun King]

Agreeing with everybody here, although I think that unless you build for skellies they are subpar.

 

[hairyjeff]

Wolves are faster, ghouls are tougher and poisonous, zombies are cheaper and easier to raise....all very true. But skellies can be a lot of fun if you don't mind a 50/50 win ratio or worse. It really is a case of whatever your own style and army build dictates. Personally I don't use ghouls ( hate the models) and only use zombies for raising, so it's big blocks of skellies and small wolf units.

 

[The Sun King]

What is this 50/50 you speak of? Also, what is having fun? I am not familiar with these concepts, but they intrique me.

 

[Count Matthewzilla]

Fun is drinking the tears of your enemy as you table them... No I'm just kidding. Games are dull when that happens.

 

[The Sun King]

"What's your favourite part of the playing chess?" - Interviewer
"When I crush another man's ego" - Bobby Fischer

 

[Lynks]

eggspr's pretty spot on there but I'll add that skeletons respond a whole lot better to buffs in my opinion. zombies are a little too terrible to really benefit and the ability to have two skellies for every ghoul makes them a little more receptive.

 

[Draugr]

A pretty comprehensive answer to all my questions here. Thanks a lot everyone. Much appreciated!

I'm now up at 07:00 on a Saturday, assembling skeletons. Very unusual for me! :zombie:

 

[Commisarlestat]

I'm contemplating getting up to build skellies now lol.

A

 

[Friendly Dead]

Skeletons arent horrible fighters, certainly not for their cost and point for point they are the equals of their human counterparts.

You can confortably bring 3 decent sized skelly units in 2500 pts battle with core points to spare on wolves as well. They don't need a specific job as many thinks. I simply build my army bretonnian style. The skellies are there to engage anything not worth the time of my characters, special and rare.

Unlike the zombies, skellies are in with a fighting chance against units of clanrats, skavenslaves, state troops, goblins, peasants all such lower key units... and if push comes to shove they can still tarpit that chaos warrior unit for a turn or 2.

Zombies simply have the weakness that all they can do is tarpit. Against enemies that don't feature super hard units they very quickly becomes very useless, because you'll often find yourself unable to actually kill any unit engaged with zombies due to CR-leeching.

As for ghouls. Double points for a unit that really don't fight better than skeletons? Suit yourself.

 

[Burnanation]

Zombies and Skellies have different places in the battle field. Zombies go and hold up whatever needs to be held up. They won't win, but with some ok magic they'll stay there for a while.

Skellies are for delivering vampires, holding a unit in place for your big nasties to flank charge, or whatever devious trick you want to pull.

Don't combo charge with zombies... Unless you're charging with more zombies. Why? Well if you loose 15 zombies on their own no big deal, but if you just charged with blood knights and they fluff, they are going to crumble in no time from CR.

Skellies, while lacking dwarf "shrug off the blows"-ness, they will hold together much better then the zombies and are therefor much better for combo charges.

 

[The Sun King]

Skeletons arent horrible fighters, certainly not for their cost and point for point they are the equals of their human counterparts.

Okay first off... this is simply not true. Spearmen which is the same price as Skeleton Warriors has +1 WS, +1 I and +4 LD compared to Skels. And that WS 3 hurts like hell for the Skels if they should ever meet the Spearmen in cc.

As for ghouls. Double points for a unit that really don't fight better than skeletons? Suit yourself.

And not to be a d-bag but this is a pretty far-fetched statement. Ghouls have +1 WS, +1 T, +1 I, +1 A, +2 LD compared to Skels... and oh yeah, they have poison attacks.

 

[Friendly Dead]

Sun King

Empire Spearmen only cost the same as skeleton spearmen if they do not take the shield the skellies come with. The LD doesn't matter jack so it all down whether you want Fear, +1 armour and Undead or if you want +1 WS and +1 Ini and detachments.

I'd reckon that's fairly even, but given the choice I'd always get the skeletons.



Once again. Ghouls only rly fight better than skellies due to poison attacks. 5+ AS is almost the equal of T4 anyway and spears means that ghouls and skellies put out equally many attacks. Alright the skellies lose theirs faster, but still.

The sum about ghouls is that they are slightly better than skeletons, but cost the double. I'm not certain what people expect them to achieve. Skeletons and ghouls have the same problems and weaknesses and will die just the same. The difference is that the ghouls can hurt monsters (who can rather easily avoid the ghouls) and that for each ghoul unit you lose, you really lose 2 skelly units

 

[The Sun King]

Simply not true again. Spearmen will hit FIRST and hit on 3+ against Skels, that in itself is a big difference.

40 Spearmen vs 40 Skellies with spears(I'm rounding down if it's ,5 or below and up otherwise):
First round:
Spearmen go first with 40 attacks. 27 hit. 13 Wound. 4 pass armour saves. 9 Skeleton warriors die.
Skellies hit back with 31 attacks. 15 hit. 7 wound. 1 pass armour saves. 6 Spearmen die.
Assuming no one charged(would be bad to lose those 10 attacks) 3 more Skeletons Warriors die to crumble.

Second round:
Spearmen go first with 34 attacks. 23 hit. 11 Wound. 4 pass armour saves. 7 Skeleton warriors die.
Skellies hit back with 21 attacks. 10 hit. 5 wound. 1 pass armour saves. 4 Spearmen die.
4 more Skeletons Warriors die to crumble.

Third round:
Spearmen go first with 30 attacks. 20 hit. 10 Wound. 3 pass armour saves. 7 Skeleton warriors die.
Skellies hit back with 10 attacks. 5 hit. 2 wound. 0 pass armour saves. 2 Spearmen die.
7 more Skeletons Warriors die to crumble. That leaves 3 Skellies left... I guess you can do the rest of the math.

Yeah, and they passed all the fear tests since I haven't been playing 1 single empire player who did have BSB and General close by his infantry, or just a captain in the unit.




Regarding Ghouls it is not true that they fight "slightly" better than Skels. They fight ALOT better. As with the spearmen vs skels it's obvious what good Initiative means in 8th. Not only do they hit at the same time as most enemies but they can also often gain the rerolling benefit from ASF(only reason I can see to field a CC). Having poison attacks effectively ensures that 16% of your attacks wound... against all enemies. Yeah and WS 3 means more than you would think, it's not much of an offensive stat but more of a defensive stat since skels will get hit on 3+ and Ghouls will be hit on 4+ by most things.

 

[Vampire Ron]

I can see the point of all the arguments of Ghouls vs Skellies but let's face it, Ghouls do often fight a lot better. So much relies on decent toughness to survive. I often play Tomb Kings and Ghouls go through their army like a knife through hot butter. Warsphinx dies so fast, same with chariots, necrosphinx, giants etc. I don't really use skeletons but I wouldn't think they would have close to the same effect. You're right about the armour save being equal but I always seem to fail armour saves so I'd take the extra toughness every time. That +1 attack means so much as well.

 

[Velmates]

The statement that T4 and a 5+ armour save are equal is simply not true. It is equal just in the case that the incoming hit is S3. From S4 upwards T4 is better.

 

[The Sun King]

Velmates hit the spot.

 

[Adam_Barrow]

Since everybody and their mother brings great weapons in force, i've opted for the higher T Ghouls with Engine Regen backing for so time. The 60 Skellies I own haven't touched the table since sometime around March.

 

[gorgonites]

Also for the record I don't see why people hate on ghoul models. I am pretty into them.

 

[hairyjeff]

It's personal taste. I don't think they're bad models, just hate the style and shape. to each ,his own.

 

[Adam_Barrow]

I've made my peace with the Ghoul model sculpts. Now I just wish they ranked up better.

 

[The Sun King]

I convert every single model in my army so I don't really care how stuff looks from stock