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So I'm playing my first WHFB game in about a year against an old friend thats coming into town; he's bringing his High Elf army to take on my Skaven, I haven't played against High Elves in at least a decade.

Through some friendly smack talk he reveled that his "reavers and dragon princes with Tyrion will make my army into rat burgers."

So now that I know he's fielding Tyrion I would like some suggestions on what to take into battle that will give him a good fight. This is a 2000 point battle and I'm assuming that dragon prince unit with Tyrion going to be be worth around 800 points. Should I just overwhelm him with numbers and toast him with warpfire, send out an Abomination, crash into those princes with a plague furnace? Any help would be appreciated!

Well what models do you have to play with?
Honestly you could tie his unit up for quite a while with slaves lol

Problem with the hpa against high elves is if he brings sisters of avelorn. I'd just bring double cannons, doomwheel or 2.
2 units of 50 slaves, maybe a furnace with a lvl 2 priest and 40 monks with plague banner. Hopefully you get bless with filth so you can pop the plague banner and get poisoned attacks, rerolling to hit and rerolling to wound. Plus the wrecker attack plus enshrouded by fog plus unbreakable. That could do it haha

The cannons and wheel are nice because of multiple wounds d6 and d3. Bring a unit of gutter runners to deal with any bolt throwers too

 chiefbigredman wrote:
Well what models do you have to play with?
Honestly you could tie his unit up for quite a while with slaves lol

Problem with the hpa against high elves is if he brings sisters of avelorn. I'd just bring double cannons, doomwheel or 2.
2 units of 50 slaves, maybe a furnace with a lvl 2 priest and 40 monks with plague banner. Hopefully you get bless with filth so you can pop the plague banner and get poisoned attacks, rerolling to hit and rerolling to wound. Plus the wrecker attack plus enshrouded by fog plus unbreakable. That could do it haha

The cannons and wheel are nice because of multiple wounds d6 and d3. Bring a unit of gutter runners to deal with any bolt throwers too

I have a lot to work with as far as models, pretty much the only thing I don't have is a plagueclaw catapult, but it was established that proxies are a okay for this game.

Alright good to know!
For your core I'd try to keep it to slaves and clanrats. Stormvermin won't hold up against much so the clanrats are probably the better option because its cheaper.

I'd go with a list like this: keep in mind tho I am really liking the plague furnace lately lol also a little bit on the low side for chaff (might want to bump it up to 2 or more)
You could drop the seer and go with a lvl 2 engineer and a warlord on war litter as your general

1999.5 points

+ (No Category) + (23pts)

* Giant Rats (23pts)
5x Giant Rats, Packmaster

+ Lords + (310pts)

* Grey Seer (310pts)
Dispel Scroll, Skaven Spells of Plague, Skaven Spells of Ruin, Talisman of Preservation


+ Heroes + (431pts)

* Chieftain (102pts)
Battle Standard Bearer, Halberd, Talisman of Endurance

* Plague Priest (284pts)
Flail, Foul Pendant, Plague Furnace, Skaven Spells of Plague, Wizard Level 1

* Warlock Engineer (45pts)
Doomrocket

+ Core + (515.5pts)

* Clanrats (124.5pts)
Musician, Standard Bearer
* 25x Clanrats
25x Shield

* Clanrats (225pts)
Clawleader, Musician, Standard Bearer, Warpfire Thrower
* 30x Clanrats
30x Shield

* Skavenslaves (82pts)
Musician, 40x Skavenslaves

* Skavenslaves (84pts)
Musician, 41x Skavenslaves


+ Special + (390pts)

* Gutter Runners (90pts)
Two hand weapons
* 5x Gutter Runners
5x Poisoned Attacks, 5x Slings

* Plague Monks (300pts)
Bringer-of-the-Word, Musician, Plague Banner, 35x Plague Monks, Standard Bearer


+ Rare + (330pts)

* Doomwheel (150pts)

* Warp Lightning Cannon (90pts)

* Warp Lightning Cannon (90pts)

Dudes fighting cav high elves. Go all plague and mortars and spam the ever living feth out of toughness shenanigans and ignoring the shooting.

Plus, double wheel and an abomb is the better option here. By miles.

Thanks for the solid list! I might toy around with it a bit. As Thedarkavenger suggested I was thinking a bit more plague.

 thedarkavenger wrote:
Dudes fighting cav high elves. Go all plague and mortars and spam the ever living feth out of toughness shenanigans and ignoring the shooting.

Plus, double wheel and an abomb is the better option here. By miles.

Completely disagree.
Going all plague spells sure. I'd rather the double cannons and a wheel over 2 wheels and an abomination. Abomination will die fast if he brings sisters of avalorn.
Also he can take the mortar if he wants but I'd rather the large flaming template and he can tie up some cavalry with slaves and fire into them the flame template


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 WorshiptheVoid wrote:
Thanks for the solid list! I might toy around with it a bit. As Thedarkavenger suggested I was thinking a bit more plague.

Also I'd be skeptical listening to everything he suggests because he doesn't play all that often (check hawaiimats signature ) not saying he doesn't know stuff but I'm not sure how often he actually plays and I don't even know if he owns skaven lol

 chiefbigredman wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:
Dudes fighting cav high elves. Go all plague and mortars and spam the ever living feth out of toughness shenanigans and ignoring the shooting.

Plus, double wheel and an abomb is the better option here. By miles.

Completely disagree.
Going all plague spells sure. I'd rather the double cannons and a wheel over 2 wheels and an abomination. Abomination will die fast if he brings sisters of avalorn.
Also he can take the mortar if he wants but I'd rather the large flaming template and he can tie up some cavalry with slaves and fire into them the flame template

If he has reavers, then he has no choice to use the slaves to protect the cannons. Else they die by turn 2. That's what the core of reavers does.

As for the abomb, sure, they can take the regen off it, but it's still the most deadly toy they have. And it is a godsend at dealing with fast cav.

And if you're taking weapons teams, you really want them to be firing at the big block worth points, which has already been revealed to have a 2+ ward against flaming.

Against any army with fast cav, 2 wheels and an abomb is infinitely better than two cannons. Cannons excel against infantry and monsters, because those are slow enough that you don't have to commit points to protecting them.

You can't even take 2 doomwheel and an abomination at 2k anyways so you might as well take 2 wheels and 1 cannon if you insist on dropping the second cannon
Agree about the warp fire thrower tho, lapse in judgement about dragon armour shenanigans

So motors in place if warp fire. Doomwheels and a cannon, what about the plagueclaw catapult in place of the cannon? Or jezzails, although he is expecting jezzails teams. Last time we gamed I threw a bunch of jezzails against his green skins and just blew them to pieces.

I wouldn't take a catapult personally. Large template is nice but strength 2 is meh for the cost. I have only ever used mine once tho so I don't have tons of experience with it.
Jezzails aren't a bad idea but you would have to bring quite a few to make it worth while since ws3 in a unit of 3 kinda blows. Wish they were ws4 with the sniper rule...one can dream haha

 chiefbigredman wrote:
You can't even take 2 doomwheel and an abomination at 2k anyways so you might as well take 2 wheels and 1 cannon if you insist on dropping the second cannon
Agree about the warp fire thrower tho, lapse in judgement about dragon armour shenanigans

Again. The wheel and abomb do far more than the cannon. You'll get what, one turn, maybe two turns of shooting unless you use your slaves to protect the cannons. Whereas the wheels can do their own thing freely.

And the abomb is still an auto include. It's pros far outweigh its cons.

Well, he just threaten me with bolt throwers too. He might as well just give me his army list lol

 WorshiptheVoid wrote:
Well, he just threaten me with bolt throwers too. He might as well just give me his army list lol

I could probably tell you his list.

Seer on plague, mortars, and random movement are the way forward against it. Cannons are a liability in that they need to be very protected against that kind of list.

Most importantly, the Banner of the World Dragon will give him a 2+ Ward save against almost every threatening model in the Skaven book. But not the Abomination!

Also, even without the 2+ vs. fire, the Mortar is going to have a much better chance at being able to get a shot off; Indirect Fire plus Move and Fire mean you might actually get to do something before being shot off the board.

I'd bring the Stormbanner. As much to ground those Eagles and Phoenii as hinder shooting.
Also, are Dragon Princes I5? Because then, at least, they don't get re-rolls against Stormvermin (61.7% of attacks cause unsaved wounds on Clanrats. 55.6% get through on Stormvermin, assuming I5).

I'd try:

1 Grey Seer + Talisman of Preservation + Dispel Scroll + Ironcurse Icon (315)
1 Warlock Engineer + lvl2 + Doomrocket (130)
1 Chieftain + halberd + Armour of Destiny + battle standard (122)

30 Clanrats + shields + full command (155pts)
1 Poisoned Wind Mortar (65)
30 Stormvermin + full command + Stormbanner (285)
50 Slaves + musician (102)
50 Slaves + musician (102)
5 Giant Rats + Packmaster (23)
5 Giant Rats + Packmaster (23)
5 Giant Rats + Packmaster (23)
5 Giant Rats + Packmaster (23)

9 Gutter Runners + Poisoned Attacks + slings (162)

1 Hell Pit Abomination (235)
1 Hell Pit Abomination (235)

You could drop the Icon on the Seer and the Engineer for a lvl2 Priest, but I've usually found that 4 Plague Spells are enough, and the ability to reach out with Warp Lightning or Scorch, or throw down a Warpgale, or bulk up with Deathfrenzy, is plenty useful.
I'd also consider dropping the Mortar for more bodies. But that's me.

Nice! Thanks for the suggestion! Game day tomorrow I'll let you guys know what I ended up going with and how it worked out