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I can never get away from this so i have to understand what this is.

Do skaven have it easy in restricted tournaments? Are there a couple dumb units or lists? Did End times make things too good for them (mostly the stormfiends with ratling cannons)?

I'm seriously curious because i can't ever seem to go anywhere without a skaven are weak or OP discussion coming up. Admittedly i do start some but i'm endlessly curious. I've played skaven 5+ years and never has the book been more full of holes than swiss cheese. Even if you should take the dumber stuff like double seer and double abomination it isn't really that great anymore. If you take 2 abominations you generally can't take any other rares besides a cannon or doomwheel in 2400-2500 points. If i am to face a daemon prince (esp. the flying type) or steam tank wtf am i supposed to do? Gutter runners have limited poisoned shooting but it's strength 3 so anything with armor just laughs it off. Cannons and doomwheels are the best choice against those (esp. cannons vs the flying daemon prince) but if you took double abomination your rares are mostly used up and you can't take the cannons.

Then i hear opponents complain about our magic. Yes 13th is good and so is plague but if the opponent has anything that isn't specifically infantry like monstrous infantry, cavalry or whatever then it doesn't matter. I suppose the love of taking two seers makes sense in that you get almost all the spells but probably half of them aren't even any good at least in any case. I've never heard anybody complain that vermintide was OP.

I've noticed in small games skaven tend to do well but at around 2,500 points that's when i actually have trouble.

I've generally heard the case of don't even take specials or don't take much in the way of wizards even or characters as they tend to take up too many points. My problem with not having level 4 wizards is that then my magical defense is that much worse. A person can have a field day when you take no wizards and they have a level 4. Also if you don't take specials that's about half the army down the drain.

Weapons teams die too easy, most specials aren't that good, anything that does damage outside of the abomination is fragile or frenzied and has bad leadership as well as has no ranks and is therefore easy to panic or force into nowhere, most plague spells have 12" range and no more and most ruin spells don't do enough damage (cracks call being an exception and skitterleap is sneaky but nothing that good). So i'm curious. I understand 13th is good and our rares are good though we're forced down certain paths. I feel like everybody complains about everything we can do though we can only do maybe a couple at most in a game.

It's very much a 7th book with 8th barely intended. I dunno it's just annoying to see. This isn't even considering the really bad stuff people can do to us like 'Railroading' our random movement units (forcing them to move forward into nowhere with any fast units), our lack of fast moving units, our lack of flyers, our lack of cavalry, our lack of armor and the fact only the abomination can last in close combat (though it does well if it gets there).

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So anyway i don't understand. Somebody enlighten me how skaven are OP or what's good or what miffs you about them. I don't understand because i've known a good many veteran players of skaven say skaven aren't that good at all esp. now excepting End Times. Yet whenever i have an opponent it's 'OMG skaven are OP!' even when i lose or various skaven players lose. Certainly any elf army or combined elves are worse than skaven. I just don't get the hate. During the first couple years i understand but with the exception of End Times skaven weren't that good.

I don't dislike playing skaven but dislike the book as it's a hot mess, it's all over the place and the faq is humongulous, oh and the race that is supposed to be the most cowardly somehow has the best ld in the game?? Add steadfast and it gets more annoying, yeah flank charge a unit and you can reduce its ld to 8 but... Cmon they should be more like gobbos with the ld

 Formosa wrote:
I don't dislike playing skaven but dislike the book as it's a hot mess, it's all over the place and the faq is humongulous, oh and the race that is supposed to be the most cowardly somehow has the best ld in the game?? Add steadfast and it gets more annoying, yeah flank charge a unit and you can reduce its ld to 8 but... Cmon they should be more like gobbos with the ld

I assure you that if Skaven had that poor of LD, then no one would play them (I certainly wouldn't play them as my main army), because they would would just be that much worse lol. There's a reason Skaven players don't play O&G (Plus, you kill our general, and our LD suddenly becomes WORSE than O&G). I agree that steadfast can be annoying for other armies, but with the current meta, it's relatively easy to bypass it or avoid it.

For the first few years, Skaven were relatively OP because people didn't know how to properly play against them, and the toys that Skaven use have the potential to do massive amounts of damage (For example, my 90 point cannon can either destroy monsters or decimate cavalry blocks). Now that people know how to play against them, I would hardly consider them OP. I think the issue is that Skaven do kind of have it easy when it comes to comp'd competitions (You can basically take all of your toys with almost no penalty). However, people have basically figured out how to beat Skaven, and you do that by killing all of their big toys. Once you do that, your Skaven opponent is just going to throw STR 3 T3 bodies at you until they lose.

Nowadays, I really don't understand the Skaven hate besides "Ermergerd Skavenslaves are OP, LD10 steadfast all the time? Oh my god." What? Do you expect us to just give you our BSB/General bunker that's worth 600-700 points and would dramatically change the game in your favor? Plus, how many slaves are you actually seeing on the table? 2-3 blocks at most? Anything more and you'll have a hard time managing them in that 12" Inspiring Presence/Hold Your Ground bubble.

There's two big reasons IMHO for all the continuous Skaven hate...

Reason #1 is as Formosa pointed out, that the book itself is currently a clusterfeth of rules, and the FAQ is ginormous and still heavily confusing at times.
Add to this how certain staple rules interact with some of the most bemoaned rules in the game, (Steadfast & super BSB), and as mentioned, suddenly the supposedly most cowardly army in the game is even more disciplined than Elves or Dwarves!

Reason #2 is what I like to call the 'Daemons effect'.
Face it, in 5th, 6th and a good deal of 7th editions, Skaven were broken as feth. SAD armies in 6th were to the point of being auto-wins, with more shooting in them than some 40k armies! The only thing that really dropped the Skaven off the competitive ladder in 7th were VC pts denial armies, Gav's 'apology' Dark Elf book, and of course, the system nuking DoC book.


Skaven simply have a bad rep, just like how all Daemon players are still trying to live down that one summer in '08...

Personally, I dislike fighting Skaven because of their stupid spellcasting.

Those spells really should have been updated with Thanquol to be brought in line with the rest, because permanent effects that go off so easily is dumb.

I don't think many people at my flgs think that skaven are overpowered. The internet is just a place where people complain about it so it seems like they are more op than they actually are. Some people are just butthurt

Honestly though I think that there are a few things that make it SEEM like skaven are op. Slaves utilize steadfast in the best possible way making them seem fairly outrageous, some people think that the abomination is overpowered (I disagree).

As others have said they aren't OP. However they are abnormal.

Their rules are a mess and the army has a VERY different playstyle than many other armies & some builds cannot adapt to it, so people cry it's OP.

Personally some of the biggest issues I see playing both with & against skaven is the randomness. The toys can be great, or they can suck eggs through grandmas tukkus.

Remember, people tend to remember when bad things happen to them & forget when good things happen. So while you will ALWAYS remember that time both your opponents HPA stood back up with full wounds, you likely will forget that time both his WLC & his doomwheel blew up top of turn 1.

Personally i hope skaven get updated right after 9th edition hits. That's why i'm kind of glad they held back skaven for the time being. Skaven, beastmen and bretonnia need new books so hard. Skaven to at least get rid of their absurd FAQ.

Besides it's always nice having a book meant for the edition it is in.

@experiment 626: That one summer in '08. What did the daemons have a dirty spring break or something ;P?

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Personally i hope skaven get updated right after 9th edition hits. That's why i'm kind of glad they held back skaven for the time being. Skaven, beastmen and bretonnia need new books so hard. Skaven to at least get rid of their absurd FAQ.

Besides it's always nice having a book meant for the edition it is in.

@experiment 626: That one summer in '08. What did the daemons have a dirty spring break or something ;P?

Yeah... apparently our 7th ed army book didn't understand that 'No means NO!' bit at all.

Mind you, Skaven SAD armies of late 6th/early 7th were even more brutal... The game would actually have been more fun had you just lined up a 40k IG gunline instead of the filthy ones!

I'll admit i was one of those filthy 40k guard players back in 4th and when the 5th edition book of guard hit. The people that won against them tended to have true skill while i just sort of ordnance'd them into oblivion. Funny you should mention them at all.

If i remember vampire counts used to have the filthy grave guard star (regen. banner, helm or ring of commandment basically giving them the vampire's WS and the banner of the barrows boosting their to hit in close combat. Add to it they can raise them back esp. with the boosted spell (basically invocation of nehek but boosted).

Oh and lizardmen in the previous book though less in options had some pretty sick freaking slann. Omg did i hate slann and i never had to face two of them at once. Then in the current book they got hit with the nerf bat and everything else was boosted.

------

As far as daemons go now they sound like the D-bag date rapists ('D' for daemon as well) with hats turned all the way backwards.

I keep seeing 'Skaven are supposed to be the most cowardly army in the game', but I think folks are taking that in the wrong way.

Strength-in-numbers makes their LD amongst the highest - and that's pretty accurately reflected in the fluff, as well. Individually skaven may be as timid as a goblin. But collectively? Not so much. They feel comforted that if they go into a fight, with so many comrades next to them, Bob or Louie next to them will take the cannonball/bullet/arrow to the knee.

Not to mention - skaven are notoriously more afraid of their masters then they generally are afraid of elf-things, man-things, lizard-things.


So, once you start a) beating down their numbers, or b) beating down those 'masters' who the lesser skaven are so scared of... their Leadership drops.

To me, it's a pretty cool and accurate system.

First of all, people on the internet just like to whine. Especially on these forums, where people who don't actually play 8th edition whine about things they experienced in the one or two casual games they played when the edition first hit half a decade ago.


Skaven aren't overpowered. Powerful, yes, but not overpowered in the slightest.

That said, there are a few reasons that Skaven get a bad rep:

1) Their rules are janky and different, to say the least, and absurdly overcomplicated in many instances. This means that they're hard to get your ahead around, both playing with and playing against. Unfortunately, it also means that many Skaven players - purposely or inadvertently - misread or misinterpret the rules...usually in the Skaven player's favour. They forget that their Strength in Numbers goes away in buildings, or when disrupted. They forget that you can't shoot into slaves when there's an engineer or assassin in them, or that spells you can cast into combat with slaves can't be cast into combat with other units (a local tournament in my area was won by a player casting 13th into combat with clanrats).

2) Playing Skaven is as much about whether their dice are rolling hot as if your opponent is actually playing a strong game. If they IF every 13th casting, their cannons roll up S10 every shot, their doom rocket hits, the orb doesn't scatter far...then yeah...good luck in that. It's not their fault, but it's obnoxious nonetheless.

3) Following from #1, though Skaven has a number of weaknesses...they're not all immediately apparent. It takes practice fighting Skaven to learn how to do it, and the number of players willing to paint 200+ furry rats are few and far between. If you only encounter Skaven in the odd tournament game then it's easy to feel that they're overwhelming.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I'll admit i was one of those filthy 40k guard players back in 4th and when the 5th edition book of guard hit. The people that won against them tended to have true skill while i just sort of ordnance'd them into oblivion. Funny you should mention them at all.

If i remember vampire counts used to have the filthy grave guard star (regen. banner, helm or ring of commandment basically giving them the vampire's WS and the banner of the barrows boosting their to hit in close combat. Add to it they can raise them back esp. with the boosted spell (basically invocation of nehek but boosted).

To be fair though, 8th edition did pretty much drop the mother of all turds on Undead when it initially hit... Tomb Kings became outright unplayable due to still being a 6th edition book, while VC's were left with about half a dozen fieldable options.
Consider that at the time, the VC 'Core Tax' was payable only by 8pts/model Skeletons, 4pts/model T2!! Zombies, or else 8pts/model Ghouls who could actually kill certain things!

While the aptly coined 'Dickenhof Guard' was obnoxious as feth, it was pretty much the only thing left in the entire VC book that could do something other than explode horrendously to combat res!


At the end of the day though, every army has their really annoying/obnoxious crap they can pull. Skaven are just one of the easier armies to hate-on because they're so vastly different across the board to everyone else...
Undead players still get hated on though for their ability to mass resurrect their forces, while Daemons get hated on for simply being Daemons... Elves get hated on for gimmicks like army-wide ASF (and the 'I-Win Banner' too!) Dwarves take the heat for gunlining like champs, etc...

@experiment 626: Kind of off topic but did you or anybody else want a game? I remember you said universal battle was something you couldn't do or get your head around. It's a shame as i need to really get my game up but at the same time you sound way too good or at least experienced for me to not get creamed.

Yeah i remember that vampire counts book since my roommate tried getting into them when that army book was still valid. The current vampire counts book has more options and is pretty disgusting i think. There are just so many options and it feels like a strong book. This is even before end times with combined armies and Nagash (who's model is apparently reading a bedtime story from a book to spirit host children) the mother of all butthurt (not sure about the other characters).

I'm just saying i wouldn't mind if slaves cost 2 and a half or even 3 points each like goblins or night goblins. I'd prefer if slaves cost 2 and a half points myself per model (if you can do that). My issue with people complaining about slaves is that if you kill the general you now have no way to shoot into your slaves while they're in combat. If you want them to stick in combat they need characters in them which negates their ability to only panic other slaves or to be shot into. I've even had a GW manager that plays skaven consider it that magic can't be cast into a combat with slaves as it says something about ranged attacks. Of course according to him warpfire throwers can't shoot into slaves either for some odd reason.

Since you are a guard player I can explain this with a 40k analogy.

Tau used to be the most OP faction in 40k

Tau were nerfed, but still were relativity competitive

People with worse armies (think DA and CSM) lose to Tau constantly before and after update and complain that they are still OP even though it is their armies fault not the other one.

 dragoonmaster101 wrote:
Since you are a guard player I can explain this with a 40k analogy.

Tau used to be the most OP faction in 40k

Tau were nerfed, but still were relativity competitive

People with worse armies (think DA and CSM) lose to Tau constantly before and after update and complain that they are still OP even though it is their armies fault not the other one.

Well currently the Tau weren't nerfed so much as the Necrons and Eldar got even better despite already being at the top of the pecking order with the Tau so the Tau aren't quite as overpowering by comparison.

Undercosted Slaves / HPA mostly.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:


Yeah i remember that vampire counts book since my roommate tried getting into them when that army book was still valid. The current vampire counts book has more options and is pretty disgusting i think. There are just so many options and it feels like a strong book. This is even before end times with combined armies and Nagash (who's model is apparently reading a bedtime story from a book to spirit host children) the mother of all butthurt (not sure about the other characters).

Off-topic, but the new VC book is very solidly middle tier. There are lots of options but they all fill roughly the same role, and we have very few options to deal with hyper maneuverable avoidance armies who just dance around us.

Our book also really crutches on how incredibly powerful and difficult to deal with our blender lords are. Trying to run VC without a blender lord is like trying to run a marathon without a right foot. You really start to see the deficiencies of the book then. Double MN double ME is alright, but that's about it.


Bringing it back on-topic though, this sort of misconception is really what the Skaven have going against them. They have lots of weaknesses, but you really FEEL their strengths when that doom rocket scores a direct hit and kills 400 points worth of stuff. "How much did that guy cost? 65 points? feth, skaven are broken!"

Same thing with VC. People get run over by blenders and terrorgheists and feel overwhelmed. They see ethereal and lose their gak. Whereas a more experienced player knows how to deal with you.

I find it funny how i've heard about 10 of the 15 armies considering OP. The only ones that have not suffered this are tomb kings, bretonnia, orcs & goblins and beastmen. Pretty much every other book now has been called OP. That's just freaking pathetic. So tired of the people saying this.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I find it funny how i've heard about 10 of the 15 armies considering OP. The only ones that have not suffered this are tomb kings, bretonnia, orcs & goblins and beastmen. Pretty much every other book now has been called OP. That's just freaking pathetic. So tired of the people saying this.

That's cause everyone who constantly looses to an army will whine and say that its overpowered. Its all the way you build and play your army, you can have a really good tomb kings army if you master them and then people will coma in that the list you used is overpowered.
The way of the world my friend unfortunately.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I find it funny how i've heard about 10 of the 15 armies considering OP. The only ones that have not suffered this are tomb kings, bretonnia, orcs & goblins and beastmen. Pretty much every other book now has been called OP. That's just freaking pathetic. So tired of the people saying this.

Every single book can produce broken/OP/gimmicky lists that will easily ruin people's day... Some are easier to do so with than others, and/or else have more than a single gimmick to play off of.
Even the likes of Tomb Kings can be utterly insane - remember when Sphinx spam was the rage? Now they can take that idea and throw Lore of Undeath into it as well for super-duper summoning.

Brets likewise get a lot of moaning about HKB characters, unavoidable challenge bot... heck, I think every single Skaven player still considers the Banner of the Lady as ultimate cheese!

Other armies get labeled as cheese simply because of their inherent rules. Chaos Warriors for example are often considered a 'no skill' army as even their basic Core grunts are pure beatsticks that come relatively cheap for what they bring. No area of that book is without amazing choices, hence, making a killer list to troll people with is quite simple.
Likewise with High Elves. The army has virtually no real weakness beyond it's characters still being average T3. However, they've been given every tool imaginable to off-set that supposed weakness, whether it's awesome ward saves, army wide ASF, 2+ saves, Frosties, etc...


At the end of the day, skill is still the most important factor in Fantasy, but certain OP/broken lists or combos can easily allow average to lesser skilled players to hang with much better players. (ie: super cheap Slaves + dual Abombs vs. a low model count elite army, or BotWD vs. Daemons, etc...)

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I find it funny how i've heard about 10 of the 15 armies considering OP. The only ones that have not suffered this are tomb kings, bretonnia, orcs & goblins and beastmen. Pretty much every other book now has been called OP. That's just freaking pathetic. So tired of the people saying this.

I ran double casket for a while and people called it cheese all the time. Buddy ran Arkhan, hierotitan, casket, and two upgraded catas to a tournament and had the same happen...even though he went 2-3. People whined and complained even as they tabled him.

TL;DR: people are whiny idiots. None of the armies out right now are 7th ed demons. They're all beatable. If you can't beat someone it's because either your list or your playstyle is deficient. Suck it up and figure it out.

I just hate dirt stinky vermin.

That aside, there is alot of crap in the book currently, good and bad, End Times made things better and worse.

Steadfast is one of the worse rules in the BRB and needs fixed big time. Skaven use steadfast to ridiclus effect. Why is it so bad, 50 Empire sword and shield in hoard formation 10 front 5 ranks vs 50 slaves sword and shield 5 front and 10 ranks. How does more ranks account for anything here? Outnumbering rules need to return to the game. IMO

As for ld I think its fine and makes sense in a hoard army the more you have the more confident the base troop is. O&G should have the same ld ability or some similar Mob rule to boost ld, even gobos. The one thing different orcs tend to laugh when a big boss gets cut down, not so much for gobos.


Edit added:

I don't think they are OP in anyway.

 Rune Stonegrinder wrote:
I just hate dirt stinky vermin.

That aside, there is alot of crap in the book currently, good and bad, End Times made things better and worse.

Steadfast is one of the worse rules in the BRB and needs fixed big time. Skaven use steadfast to ridiclus effect. Why is it so bad, 50 Empire sword and shield in hoard formation 10 front 5 ranks vs 50 slaves sword and shield 5 front and 10 ranks. How does more ranks account for anything here? Outnumbering rules need to return to the game. IMO

As for ld I think its fine and makes sense in a hoard army the more you have the more confident the base troop is. O&G should have the same ld ability or some similar Mob rule to boost ld, even gobos. The one thing different orcs tend to laugh when a big boss gets cut down, not so much for gobos.


Edit added:

I don't think they are OP in anyway.

I think every problem you are mentioning would be fixed by the return of the old Lap Around rule (or whatever the terminology was where the winning side could get their back ranks onto the flanks of the enemy)
I remember that rule being hated though, but I can't recall why.

My biggest bitch with skaven is that the army books special rules, RAW, are a hot fething mess of undivinable intent (and i say this having professional done wargame design for Privateer Press as a Rules / Development Infernal).

The FAQ is very large for an FAQ, and in many cases further muddies things (I am personally of the opinion that Vetock should be flogged for the wording of the Skaven Lightning Cannon, and then whomever issued the FAQ "clarification" should be flogged with Jeremy Vetock for the sheer ubiquity of unclear and meandering language.... i know tight rules aren't GW's strongest point, but my fething god, that rule and its "clarification" have logic issues wide enough to drive a bus through if you care to argue them ... which is ultimately fruitless.)

There are other just mind boggling things in the book, but that's my most hated example.


On the whole, i find them fun to play against, but i wince every time there's a rules disagreement, because I know it's a clusterfeth of a written book, despite having good and interesting design intent. I will give it this, it's one of the more unique and flavorful books even still now, and it was written in 2009 I believe, so it's aged very well.

Speaking of easy to beat with skill, how does one beat skaven with a dwarf army ?

Makumba wrote:
Speaking of easy to beat with skill, how does one beat skaven with a dwarf army ?

Corner castle, shoot with all you got.

@flamingkillamajig: the answer to your question is the same as it's been every other time you asked it.

It's been touched upon several times here, but to clarify:

The threats a Skaven player brings to the table are low in model count, very cheap and very unreliable, when compared to other armies.
When a block of Chaos Warriors helps win the game, there are dozens of dice rolled.
When a Doomrocket, Warplightning Cannon, or the like helps win the game, that's all determined by a small handful of dice.

This results in greater outliers. The more dice you roll, the closet to the average your results will appear.
I've had games where I ripped through three enemy units with Plague, got a direct hit with my Doomrocket and my two Cannons, and basically won the game before my opponent could take their first turn.
And I've had the opposite, of course. And, mostly, games that fall between.
But Skaven have more of those huge wins and huge losses than a lot of other armies, thanks to a smaller significant die pool.

As far as Steadfast goes, the only times I see it being an issue are when huge Skaven blocks come up against large blocks of other mediocre troops, or middle-teir cavalry.
50 Slaves get chewed up pretty fast by the elites of the game. Which is, you know, what I want them to fight. I usually expect them to last two combat phases. And for the points and, more importantly, the footprint of the unit and how they limit the ready of my army, I think that's fine.

It's stuff like running six naked Warlock Engineers as chaff that gets under my skin.
They should be forced to take upgrades.

In my experience, there are three main reasons they get the hate, at least at the tournament level:

1) Rules are a mess- Already touched on at length. Also, the complexity of the rules lets unscrupulous people can pull some shenanigans with the book on newer players.

2) Cheap Chaff- You can kill hundreds of rats and barely score any VP in a game. This is especially true when you have to scoot around rat darts, slingers, and solo engineers, all while getting drilled by the underpriced ranged weapons of the army.

3) Slow Playing- This is not always intentional, but when you combine 1 and 2 with moving tons of units around, its pretty routine for a skaven army to play three turns and win by the margin of whatever they shot off the board because time runs out. For me, this is the biggest annoyance.

Warpsolution wrote:
@flamingkillamajig: the answer to your question is the same as it's been every other time you asked it.

It's been touched upon several times here, but to clarify:

I know but regardless of the answers i find players always end up complaining about it. I just can't get away from them even when i try to figure out the reasons or ask other players. Nope it's just 'Skaven are OP!' and that gets under my skin so bad.