Rattle your bones and wrap up your mummies it’s time to discuss the Shambling Undead. TSU (my trademark for them) are a top tier team that combine brute strength, blitzing and maneuverability. In short they are a hybrid team that can do most things really well. I would happily recommend these guys as noob friendly. You will never be too far away from the result with undead...unless they fail to stop all of that elf bullwhat.
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Regeneration
Undead teams do not hire apothecaries. The main reason is, well, they are already dead. Instead they are able to regenerate. With the exception of ghouls, the whole team can come back from injury on a roll of 4-6 on a d6. That is super powerful. The ability to mitigate injuries against your best players means that you are more likely to have them back for the next game as well as saving you money as you won’t need to replace as many players throughout a league. This is less useful for a resurrection tournament, however, you do still get the benefit of a player re-joining the subs bench ready for the next drive.
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The Necromancer.
Not much to say on this one. If you kill an enemy (<Str 4, no regen or stunty) then there is a chance he will be reincarnated as a zombie for your team for that game. If you want to keep him you can buy him for 40k after the game. And you get to keep his name - one more flick of spit in the eye for your enemies.
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Players
Mummies 12k 3519 mighty Blow, Regeneration
The mummy is the real reason that the undead team shine. They are Strength 5, have mighty Blow, have regeneration and have armour 9. They also do not have the dreaded negatrait or loner that other big guys have. This is massive - roll double skulls? You can reroll with a decent amount of certainty. The negative is that they can only move 3, but who cares? They are there to tie up as many of the better players of the opposition as possible. Try to keep them together as they can be quickly isolated by faster players. A bit of break tackle along with a guard mummy makes him a real pain in the backside.
Suggested Skills
Normal - Guard, Break Tackle, Stand Firm
Doubles - Block, Tackle, Side Step
Stat + : ST, MV
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Wights 90k 6338 Block, Regeneration
The Wights are your blitzers (due to the fact that they have block and can only be downed by rolling a skull) and at a pinch can also turn into your try scorers due to having AG 3. Try to give them the chance to score when you can to take the heat off your squishy ghouls. The extra skills will really help them and you want to plow points in here rather than that AV 7 ghoul who will already hoover up points like there is no tomorrow. Use your guarded wights to blitz people out of the way while also adding tackle zones to enable others to block.
Suggested Skills
Normal - Guard, Mighty Blow, Tackle
Doubles - Dodge, Side Step
Stat + : ST, AG, MV
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Linemen
The Undead are blessed with 2 types of linemen. You can have Zombies or skeletons. They are designed to stand there and be hit so the extra armour of the zombie makes more sense, although I had one skeleton (my captain) just to add a little bit more movement in the middle of the field. Use the zombies to man mark the most expensive pieces on the board to try and tie them up or use them as a screen against more agile teams. And if one of those expensive players falls down nearby? Foul, foul foul. They are 40k and if you can get rid of a 100k piece then that puts you ahead of the curve even if you get sent off. I was waiting for my first lineman skill up but it never came - I would have taken kick on one and dirty player on another. Kick allows you to pressure the receiving team more and dirty player is mighty blow for fouling. I really wanted Dirty player on my skellie...oh well.
Use your zombies on the line and flex the skeleton to whatever job is needed. Need a cage corner? Need an extra lineman? Need an extra assist? Need a man-marker?
Zombie 40k 4328
Skeleton 40k 5327 Thick Skull
Suggested Skills
Normal - Block, Wrestle, Dirty Player (x1), Kick (x1), Stand Firm
Doubles - Guard, Dodge, Diving Tackle
Stat + : ST, MV
Star Players - I’ve only ever used Setekh so cannot comment but bang for buck he was great - I can imagine Count Von D is also really good although he is bloody expensive.
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Ghouls 70k 7337 Dodge
Do not make best friends with a ghoul. They will get injured or killed and you will be replacing them all of the time. The good thing about the ghoul is that when they are alive then can do almost anything well. The can be a blodger or a wrodger or a wrackler or a strip baller or a frenzy surfer or your ball carrier. Your skills should be cherry picked based on the rolls they get - did you get a double first? Build that ghoul around guard. Did you get +AG? He is your ball carrier.
Suggested Skills
Scorers Block, Sure Hands
Sackers Strip Ball, Wrestle, Tackle
Hitters Block, Frenzy
Doubles Guard, Mighty Blow
Stat +: ST, AG, MV, AV
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Skills - Mighty Blow
Mighty Blow is on the strength tree adds +1 to either the armour or injury rolls. Not much more to say.
For a standard player there is a 42%/28%/17% chance that an armour break will occur for AV 7/8/9. With Mighty Blow this increases to 58%/42%/28%. That’s quite a big difference and it happens every block. If that break occurs then there is a 52% chance for stun, 25% chance for KO and 17% for injury. If you use Mighty Blow then this increases to 42%, 30%, 28%. An 11% increase for injury as mahoosive.
Skills – Guard
Guard is also on the strength tree. This is a great skill and it will benefit your team every turn. Maybe even every block if you have enough of it. Guard allows you to ignore tackle zones when adding strength to someone else’s block. It can be used on offence and defence. It can make a bash team think again about engaging. It can protect your fragile pieces. It can also allow your low strength mighty blow pieces to get extra dice on blocks. Basically, if you can get guard, you should get guard. If you can get a guard piece on the 4 corners of a cage then that wardancer is going to think twice about leaping into the middle of it. Be wary of undefended guard pieces, particularly those without block as they will have the biggest targets on their backs for the opposition to take down. Once the guard pieces go down, things can quickly turn into a house of cards farted on by nuffles massive flatulent bottom.
Great stuff Stu...but would you really take +1MA on a mummy?
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