Total War: Warhammer III – Tomb King Army Composition Guide (Campaign)

Making some sense of Tomb King skill trees & army compositions.

Guide to Tomb King Army Composition

All credit goes to CapitaineYolo!

Why Cover This Topic?

Boosting Units Stats via skills & ancillaries is a major part of TW:WH’s campaigns. Whereas most other factions have a relatively easy time maximising these boosts by aligning their army compositions & skill choices, it’s not quite as easy for Tomb Kings, whose ability to shift their army composition is restricted by the bounds of their given Unit Capacities.

Due to this lack of flexibility it pays off to plan ahead as Tomb Kings, which is where this Guide comes in.

Skill Tree Structure

Tomb King Lords may align themselves with one of these 4 Gods: Asaph, Geheb, Ptra or Usirian. Because only one God may be chosen it makes sense to pick center the build around them. The picture above indicates which skills go with which.

Army Compositions

Ptra – War of Attrition

This Army relies on Heavy Infantry & Chariots to win in a drawn out war of Attrition. The Lore of Nehekharra is essential because the Lore Passive heals 19/20 units, most of which are of high value. A Tomb Prince works well both on Foot or Chariot while a Necrotect on a Chariot may be included to support the Warsphinx.

Geheb – Killing their Leaders

Works best against factions that rely on Single Entities (Lords/Casters/Monsters) to win. The idea is to buy time with the Skeleton Spearmen & Hierotitan while removing valuable units with the Ushabti & Lore of Death. Necrotects come in handy due to the high amount of constructs.

Apart from being able to snipe Casters, this army is also quite resilient against most magic thanks to the low amount of entities. The same makes it vulnerable to being focus fired by ranged heavy factions though.

Asaph – Unleashing the inner Skaven

Ambushes, Volume of Fire & Single Entities. If you play Skaven you know how these fit together.

If not – the idea is to catch the opposing force in a bad position so that they are forced to regroup while getting shot at. Not having a frontline allows the gunline to be even bigger. Lore of Light is essential for its snare & passive, which will keep your units from crumbling under pressure. The same applies to the Necrotect for the constructs.

Usirian – Blood for the Bl- err I mean Souls for the Realm of Souls

This army is more or less scrambled together from all the units that didn’t meet the other gods standards. You shouldn’t deliberately try to build it but will rather find yourself occasionally making one in order to make use of these spare rejects. Ofcourse the result is going to be far from impressive, but thats not the point. The point is making the most of what you have, or trading up in other words.

The broad idea then is to drown the opponent in corpses. Surrounding their force & Engaging with all units at once guarantees that some amount of favourable trading is going to happen somewhere in the fight – even though heavy casualties are guaranteed.

The Lore of Shadows helps making the surround happen and also has some good threat removal in the form of Debuff & Vortex spells. A Tomb Prince may be included to bolster Morale & provide some much needed Anti Large while a Necrotect may support this army’s only high quality melee unit, the Necropolis Knights. The Casket is mainly there to force the opponent out of any entrenchment they might have.

A Couple More Things

While Khalida (aligned with Asaph) & Settra (aligned with Ptra) perfectly fit their respective Gods, Arkhan (aligned with Usirian) comes with Lore of Death instead of Shadows. Which is no big deal, as both Lores are quite similar. Khatep, however, (aligned with Geheb) comes with Lore of Nehekharra and a Casket Mount. He’s a bit all over the place, so I guess he can be played many different ways, or requires a different army alltogether.

Carrion are terrible in combat but great at scouting & chasing off fleeing units. It’s a good idea to include one in every army for this reason.