Howdy! That's my question: Does anyone still use Zombie swarms? And I'm not talking about the occasional Skeleton (with Weapons Mastery) or Detonating Zombie that gets tossed up and into a far off enemy by a Magic Levitator. I'm talking about straight up Zombie hordes. The Living Dead en masse. Followed up of course by Grave Robber. Maybe even led by a Nightwitch or two.

Cause it use to look so cool, and now I NEVER see it, presumably because (with their 6" movement) they will never make it into battle with any stats worth using. Flame Lightning, Bound, Ram, and ever increasing ranges just seem to have made the Walking Dead sort of a joke.

It's actually much more common for me to see Grave Robbers used with the "Big Boys and Girls" such as Solonavi Strikers, Amazon Draconum or just about anything else really than the Zombies that would seem to be their cup of tea. Any opinions?

Edible dead played a couple formations of marsh zombies in a recent conquest event. He even posted pics here in a thread titled "Isabee's orcs".

I personally think formations of detonating zombies** being force marched would be neat.

Give it a shot and let us know if you had fun.
Rob

havent played one of those in a long time... detonating zombies are very scary....migth have to try that.....

although i like to make big themed armies, such as a zombie swarm, unforuntatly its really rare to see such a rare siting now. There are a few reasons that we dont see this anymore. First being it is extremely hard to pull ahead in point totals when you have to constantly reserect your figures, even if you do well kill all your opponents figures, you still will often lose becuas of the necromancy. Another reason is as you said, the 6 inch movment just wont work agains a lot of fiures, like a bounder for instance would devistate a zombie army. Final reason I can think of at this time is because everyone is in a craze to do all these long range armies that only consist of a little amount of figures.

In my region, my friends and I almost play bigger single faction battles. One of my friends is a skillful NS-player and he always uses Zombies and Zombie hounds led by a Zombie Baron.

In the back of his army he often has some grave robbers and corrupted priests.

It's still hard to play against an undead army because they are coming back and coming back and coming back.....

Each time we play aginst him, our primary targets are the Grave robbers, but it's nearly impossible to reach them AND kill them (to knock them out of necromancy is usesless because of the corrupted priests nearby).

Charge is useless because there are always hounds to base you, bound is useless because the robbers have stealth (and are always placed in hindering terrain), only the use of Khumeret of Cairo was successful in the past.

In conquest games, it's really impressive to see a great amount of undead figures on the field... it's hard to face them, but it's nice to...

I have many more zombies than skeletons, so when I Bone Toss they get the most attention.

well I might have to tery that very soon! Maybe it can work.

I still think that, while not the most effective strategy anymore, undead swarms are definately nigh impossible to stop..and they look wicked hard core.
Seriously, I think I'll do a zombie swarm at my next tournament, just to see the looks on opponents faces when almost every figure in the army can be brought back at full health instantly.

The reason why Zombie Swarms don't work in tournaments:

You lose them multiple times over, and always get behind on points.

The solution:

Play them for fun, and in games where you do not play for points, only to destroy your opponent's army.

If you want to mess with some minds in Conquest then try this:
Order of Uhlrick: 88
Zombie Baron: 82
Rottooth: 27
**ZombieHoundsX19: 380
*ZombieHound: 19
**Detonating ZombiesX10: 210
***NightWitchX3: 129
*BrassCommandersX5: 135
*CrystalProtectorsX10: 130
Total Points 1200;)

This thing is evil.... literally

If necropolis ever gets a 12" forced marcher I'd think about getting zombified in conquest. Right now too slow. Although the zombie hound idea is pretty cool. I don't have quite enough though.

My brother in law plays Zombie hounds and night witches, but that is about the end of his facination with dead things.

The last tournament he took his zombie houds to he came in second. He ripped apart a storm golem to do it too!

well, dunno ... if you can count my stalking skelly swarm on this category ... but it's almost basically the same :)

I don't have the necessary figures for a Conquest Zombie Hoarde. But I'm trying to get enough.

i still use them in themed/scenario games with less than 25pt figures as a requirement and in conquest.