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Ok so this has a decent amount of models in it. I counted about 280 models for the army list.

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Grey Seer
-level 4 wizard, spells of ruin
-d3 warpstone tokens
-foul pendant
-dispel scroll
=295 pts

Warlord
-enchanted shield
-war litter
-talisman of preservation
-sword of strife
=220 pts (skaven army book enchanted shield is more expensive in points)

Chieftain
-BSB
-armor of destiny
-halberd
=122 pts

Clanrats x36
-shields
-full command
=182 pts

slaves x50
-musician
=102 pts

slaves x50
-musician
=102 pts

slaves x20
-slings
-musician
=52 pts

slaves x20
-slings
-musician
=52 pts

slaves x20
-slings
-musician
=52 pts

slaves x20
-slings
-musician
=52 pts

slaves x20
-slings
-musician
=52 pts

slaves x20
-slings
-musician
=52 pts

Rat ogres x6
-packmasters
=264 pts

Rat ogres x6
-packmasters
=264 pts

Hellpit abomination
=235 pts

Doomwheel
=150 pts

Doomwheel
=150 pts

Total=2398 pts

I may need to re-calculate this number with a calculator or similar but I think it's right.

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Ok so I probably went a little overboard on the slaves ;P. The big blocks of slaves are there to stay in combat for a while. They will be 5 wide and 10 deep. Normally I'd have more big blocks of slaves but those tend to get a harder to handle with leadership. The small slave units with slings are for re-direction and for some chaff killing if at all possible. As odd as it sounds I will try to run the slaves with slings 10 wide and 2 deep. It might be an odd choice to have them but they're cheap and easily spammable. The musicians are most likely an absolute waste of time but it's 2 points so whatever. Also I can have them as part of my core allowance rather than throwing out a ton of crap for gutter runners and taking up special choice while still needing to fill my core choice up to a certain limit. This opened up more options so that I could run more special like 2 units of 6 rat ogres each while having my rare choices at near maximum capacity. The point of the rat ogres is of course to hit hard with big slave blocks possibly holding the enemy at bay long enough for the rat ogres to flank charge and the small slaves taking care of enemy chaff that might ruin things. The 2 doomwheels are there for monster killing obviously. The abomination is there to just ruin the enemy's day. The grey seer is for magic and dispelling enemy magic and he's my general. The BSB is there for obvious reasons. Finally the warlord is there for the grey seer to possibly skitterleap him near the enemy general or wizard which is most likely behind the entire enemy line inside of a weak command unit. With a very heavily armored and warded warlord that's throwing out 10 strength 4 attacks with himself and his war litter stormvermin I think he'll be able to cut them down just fine. Even if that isn't the case I want to hold the enemy wizard in close combat for as long as I can to help prevent the enemy from throwing spells at me. Alternatively I can also use the warlord/skitterleap build to throw him in to kill cannons or to disrupt enemy gun-lines by skitterleaping to their rear and then charging them.

Hopefully all these tactics work. I may end up throwing some points around a little more but I'm not sure. I feel like I may need one more horde of lots of slaves. Then again slaves with slings tend to do few casualties at range.

Well...here are my two Warptokens:

- I like the Warlord, but you should either declare him as your General, or strip him down and send him a-hunting with Skitterleap. Armour of Silvered Steel and a halberd or something like that.

- no Doomrocket?!

- That is a lot of Slaves. I like the idea, but you've got way too many. Slings aren't a bad upgrade for those little units, but the ways in which they're useful are very few. I'd never take more than 3-4. If you need other chaff, look into Rat Darts, or even Night Runners. For 80pts, you get a smaller footprint, +1 WS and BS, and +1M.

- two units of 6 Rat Ogres is a lot of points for very little oumphe. I'd drop one of them, and then give the other a Master Bred and a Packmaster.
You say you want slings, but don't want to take them out of your Special allowance, but...you've got almost 1100pts left over.

- overall, it's a neat idea. I'd just try to vary it a little bit. Get s'more destructive shooting and a few dirty tricks.
Dropping 3 blocks of Slaves and some Rat Ogres would give you 420pts; that'd be enough for, say, a Warpfire Thrower, some Rat Darts, more Clanrats, a Warlock Engineer with the Rocket, and a big team of Gutter Runners.

Actually I'm planning on taking a screaming bell perhaps and dropping some stuff for more clanrats to push said bell (perhaps one unit of slaves and one unit of rat ogres).

Why do I need a doomrocket? It's fantastic if you skitterleap in the enemy army's flank but it's a one shot deal. It's fantastic yeah but I should hope I have other plans. Perhaps I should do it though.

I actually would like to stay to at least 4-5 slaves with slings units. They can actually put out a decent amount of firepower. Nothing super fantastic but 18" multi shot shooting that you can move and fire with even on BS 2 units is actually not bad. It might not seem like much but they're good at killing chaff and later can be used to become good chaff themselves or at least in theory. Slaves with slings are cheaper than night runners and they can take a musician. Sure their leadership is poor but if you take a seer on a bell the general's leadership bubble is that much better.

It doesn't totally matter if slaves do flee as they're mostly there to kill chaff and not much else and they don't panic anything other than other slaves (also if slaves do hold in combat thanks to the general's leadership they can be shot into or if they lose combat and fail leadership they'll just explode and kill their enemies which should already have been thinned out a lot). Running them like gutter runners is probably a mistake. They take down enemies with massed firepower and considering their points they're actually not half bad at doing it. My last opponent tried keeping his forest goblin spider riders away after I killed a bunch just so I wouldn't shoot them all to death and they cost a lot more points per guy than my slaves. We're talking about 3-4 spider riders per unit of slaves with slings or something depending on who could shoot and esp. if my guys didn't move before shooting (which as it turns out helps a ton).

It's a pretty good unit when massed in my eyes. It has its flaws sure and takes up quite a lot of table space but they're good. I may even use plenty in smaller points games. I find it odd I don't see other people using them. They're not the best thing ever but in combination with the 5 wide large units of 50 slaves they tend to do well. I feel like they're actually a decent answer to flying units like harpies that would otherwise just go around my random movement units and force them off into nowhere or a good answer against other fast units that move around my guys.

I can move and shoot with them, they have no misfire, they're cheap, they don't need a parent unit to be purchased, they're more durable than weapons teams, you can use them to count for your minimum core requirement and they can even swift reform and shoot if you get a musician for 2 points which is a lot better than what night runners have. Also they cost less than a 3rd of what night runners cost for -1 BS, lacking leadership of night runners, the vanguard equivalent of night runners and maybe quick to fire throwing stars. It sounds like a bit but when you count all the things they beat night runners in you see that slaves with slings are usually superior. Night runners can probably get to the enemy chaff faster but it's not a huge move, the BS difference is also not huge considering the large cost difference and the leadership would be helpful but enough units of nightrunners just becomes expensive.

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So I dunno. Currently I like this set-up. I'll tweak it a bit with the screaming bell and maybe one less unit of slaves with slings as they tend to bunch up a little and I only really need an advancing line of slaves with slings rather than guys in the back with nothing to shoot. I also prefer slaves with slings to night runners. Slaves with slings can be massed more easily and they do more for their cost as slaves are in ways under-priced in points whereas night runners probably cost more than they should.

- BS2 means with 40 shots, at close range, having moved, against T3 models with no save, you're dealing out 3.3 wounds.
Are you at long range, or have you moved? 1.7 wounds. Both? 1.1. It's against T4 with a 5+? 0.5.
With only 18", you're going to either be moving or at long range almost every time. Against Spider Riders, a block of 20, assuming they can all shoot (which they probably can't), you're looking at 1 wound per block.
Again. It's not terrible. But it's not the most efficient use of your points.

I'm not saying it's useless. But its uses are minor and narrow. You've sunk over 300pts into that gimic. The only way that'll be worth it is if you're facing nothing but Wolf Riders and Elf infantry, and even then, you're probably better off spending some of those points elsewhere.

The key advantage to Nightrunners is, as I've said, they've got a smaller footprint. With all those block, how are they not all testing for Panic when one of them runs?
But then, yeah, there's the faster movement. And the WS3 and two attacks each. For 80pts, a unit that's getting up in your face faster, throwing out 20 shots, and then has 15 attacks and a tiny footprint? It's not bad.

I'm not saying taken ten. I'm saying taken one or two. That's what Skaven do best; take a few of lots of different things, to have a wide range of threats and a lot of answers to different situations.

- Why take a Doomrocket? Because it throws down a large S5 template for 30pts. That should be enough, right there.
It could take a huge chunk out of a block. It could cause panic in the enemy line if it hits a smaller unit. It punches through heavy armour and wounds Ogres.

Compare that to BS2 S3 shots. Bretonnia, Warriors, Ogres, Lizardmen, and other lists don't care about those at all. But there's always at least one viable target in a list for the Doomrocket.
...and even if there isn't. It's 30-freakin'-points. It's the dumbest thing in the book.
If I could, my 2400pt list would look like this:

53 Warlock Engineers + Doomrockets (2385)
1 Warlock Engineer (15)

Yeah it was a 2nd test run of an idea and my last game couple games they performed pretty unspectacularly. On the up side I think I'm understanding the importance of swift reform esp. to charge block in a better position with my slaves. It's very helpful since doing so forced an opponent to go a certain way and would've ruined one of his charges. Sad I failed 2 very important charges in my last game. They could've been fairly decisive. We still counted it as me winning though since his main unit was running away and he was under 25% of his starting unit size so he would've needed double 1's. I also enjoy charging an already fleeing opponent farther away as long as they're in charge range esp. if you can force it to block enemy units or to cause panic in other enemy units. Funny how useful panic is sometimes. I'm unsure if I want to flee with some units if facing a pro at that.

Here's a list I've been playing around with that uses a lot of those similar tactics:

- Grey Seer + Talisman of Preservation + Dispel Scroll + Ironcurse Icon (315)

- Warlock Engineer + lvl2 + Doomrocket (130)
- Chieftain + halberd + Armour of Destiny + battle standard (122)

- 18 Stormvermin + full command + Standard of Discipline (166)
- 1 Ratling Gun (55)
- 18 Stormvermin + full command (151)
- 1 Warpfire Thrower (70)
- 18 Stormvermin + full command (151)
- 1 Warpfire Thrower (70)
- 21 Skavenslaves + musician + slings (54.5)
- 21 Skavenslaves + musician + slings (54.5)
- 20 Skavenslaves + musician + slings (52)
- 10 Nightrunners + slings (80)
- 10 Nightrunners + slings (80)

- 9 Gutter Runners + Poisoned Attacks + slings + Death Runner + Smoke Bombs (184)
- 9 Gutter Runners + Poisoned Attacks + slings + Death Runner + Smoke Bombs (184)

- 1 Warp Lightning Cannon (90)
- 1 Warp Lightning Cannon (90)
- 1 Doom Wheel (150)
- 1 Doom Wheel (150)

...pretty sure that's 2,399. It's really low for model-count compared to other Skaven lists, but the idea of MMU-Skaven confuses the Hell out of people. They just don't know what to do with all those targets. None of them are particularly juicy, and the board ends up pretty well-clogged on your opponent's side.
It's tricky, to be sure, but it's turning out to be a goodly amount of fun.

I'm not really feeling it with your list. It looks really tricky to win with. Nothing is really that good at fighting in combat and I just don't know. I can't imagine any of those units would stay in combat longer than 2 seconds.

You say that these lists aren't good at fighting. NOTHING in the book is, save for the 4+ ward wall of stormvermin. Simply because they have the toughness and the wards to shrug off wounds. Couple that with the magic of the seer, and you'll see why the unit is so good in the combat phase.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I'm not really feeling it with your list. It looks really tricky to win with. Nothing is really that good at fighting in combat and I just don't know. I can't imagine any of those units would stay in combat longer than 2 seconds.

The trick is target saturation. You make your opponent slog through a storm of sling bullets, magic, Warp Lightning and Warpfire, and then you flee from charges and re-direct, and then your 18-strong Stormies come in and mop up.
But not the real threats of his army. Those you bait and delay and re-direct and march-block forever. You snag enough points to win while giving up as little of your own as you can.