Khemri Tomb Guardians

Khemri Tomb Guardians Overview:

The main advantage that Tomb Guardians have is that they are the strongest players in the game that have no negative traits. Unlike other players who are as strong or stronger than them, they don’t have Loner or suffer from losing their action or tackle zone. It is clear their very high strength is their main advantage and they also have high armour and Regeneration. Their downsides are that they are somewhat slow, have very low agility, fairly expensive and they also suffer from Decay. Their last real downside is that they don’t have normal access to general skills, so getting Block is a lottery and can make them unreliable.

Tomb Guardians are really good at two main things, being road blocks and hitting opponents. Their high strength makes them very hard to hit, especially as you can get four of them, while also being able to get favourable blocks on opponents. Tomb Guardians have changed slightly from previous editions, they now have an extra square of movement which can come in very handy. They don’t have to go for it in order to blitz an adjacent opponent from being prone any more. It also gives them greater range of mobility on the pitch which helps with advancing a cage.

Gaining the movement though came at the expense of losing Mighty Blow. That means they are slower at development and don’t cause as much damage from the start as before. Tomb Guardians also gained Decay to combat the difficulty of facing four highly developed ones working in tandem. Fortunately they have Regeneration though and a successful roll means you can ignore both injuries from Decay. It isn’t a massive problem to deal with either, with them being ST5 and having high armour, even knocking them over can be taxing, let along breaking the armour and inflicting injury.

To deal with the fact they don’t have access to general skills, which makes them somewhat unreliable (though they can freely use team rerolls), there are a number of things you can do. The main thing I would look for is to try and set up three dice blocks with them. Against ST2 they don’t need any help, but against ST3 if you can get two assists then you get the third block die. Not only will it make them more reliable due to a lower chance of turnover, but it also increases the odds of a knock down, helping both their development and also getting a numerical advantage. As the team becomes more developed, more of your team mates are going to have Block. At this time, you should look to use the Tomb Guardians later in the turn as the Block players are less likely to turnover. It might deprive them of some blocks, but if that is the case, they should then be free to move instead which can be just as useful.

Road Block Tomb Guardian:

• Normal: Mighty Blow, Guard / Stand Firm, Grab, Break Tackle, Piling On
• Doubles: Block
• Stat Increase: +ST +MV

Tomb Guardians are likely to spend a lot of time in the tackle zones of opposing players, so maximising their potential to keep those opponents occupied, or even better hurt them, is to your benefit. Start off with Mighty Blow, it will help get more SPP to combat their slow development (they won’t be getting many touchdowns or completions) and also to remove opponents off the pitch. Getting the number advantage makes advancing a cage much easier, especially for a slow and clumsy team like Khemri.

Next I would either go for Guard or Stand Firm. Guard will help maximise the amount of three dice blocks you can get with your Tomb Guardians, to minimise the lack of general skill access and therefore block, to make them more reliable. It will also help get two dice blocks for your lower strength team mates and help protect you ball carrier. Stand Firm stops opposing teams from just pushing them out of the way and means you can get more blocks in with them. It can also be great for forcing a ball carrier to dodge and generally slowing the advance of a cage.

Grab is also a great skill for a Tomb Guardian and you could well consider it as an earlier choice as well. It helps keep opposing players tied up, especially useful if you are marking more than one opponent. The fact you can keep them in base contact easier also means that they can block as often as possible. Grab can also help with setting up chain blocks, crowd pushes and also cancels out Side Step which is helpful if you need to try and get rid of a marker on one of your team mates. After that I would get Break Tackle to help against them getting marked out the game, sometimes it is best to try and move the ball forwards and not take a block. It is no good hitting and killing an opponent if you are then too far from the end zone to score, or you end up losing the ball cause you couldn’t move to protect it.

For doubles it is hard to look past anything other than Block. It will make them much more reliable and you can safely take two dice blocks with them earlier in a turn, than trying to engineer three dice blocks all the time. If you are lucky you can get Block on all of them which is a great boost to the team. For stat increases, strength throws up an intereseting proposition as you could get ST6, though it is also a double roll and I think that Block may be more beneficial. With four ST5 players on the team already and Guard access on them, there shouldn’t be much call for needing ST6, though obviously it is great fun to have! An agility increase is pretty much a total waste, while movement will be far more useful than armour, so that is an easy choice.

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