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I Need some help with beating down skaven. I don't know, maybe this skaven player is just flat out better than me, but does any one have any sugestions on how to beat Skaven with High Elves. every time I play I seem to get destroyed.

What units do you usually run.

I usually run Silver helm, at least 9 of them with a noble. 20 sword masters, a block of 15-20 spearmen. if we get into the bigger points, i will take white lions or phoenix guard.

What type of skaven does your opponent run? Horde? Shooty? Magic? Grey seer? Warlord? Etc. Whats your standard points level?

Horde skaven need to utilize their numbers in order to win. Try to use terrain to force them into a bottleneck where they have to fight you head on. Stubborn units guarding your flanks, like white lions, give skaven players headaches. When you shoot at them, either pick on their flanking units away from their general, or go straight for the generals' unit to try and get it to run and thereby reduce the entire armies' leadership. It'll depend on how big the generals' unit is, and how the shooting angles work.

Shooty skaven won't have quite as many numbers, and will rely on gunning down and thinning out your elite units quickly so his basic clanrats can win a 1v1 fight. Spells from the lore of life like rain lord and howler wind work very well to protect you against this type of army.

Magic heavy skaven are similar to shooty skaven, but in this case drain magic and a few dispel scrolls and/or some magic resistance on your units will help more.


SteveW

I suppose that puts you in the realm of the low point games

First off, take dragon princes over silver helms, it is worth it.
Second, 20 sword masters means lots o guys in the back ranks costing you a lot and doing nothing.

There are two ways to combat scaven
MSU is a very good way since you can match them block for block and yours are better. This becomes an interesting game of cat and mouse as you both try to not let certain things happen. In this case get a couple bolt throwers and kill any ratling gun you see. they will destroy you. This is a very good strategy but can be hard to learn. Also usually used in large games.

In smaller games it is better to just go over and destroy whatever he has. Take two bolt throwers again to kill any jazeles.
The main army should be a couple dragon prince units (5 man with musician and banner) and a couple lion chariots. You can just run through him.
Take a couple small blocks of spear men to thrash any slaves that get close and try to redirect you. the no armor thing really hurts them in this instance.

What does he usually run?

He usually plays a mix between shooty and magic. his numbers out number me, but who doesn't. he doesn't outnumber me by a whole lot, bo I would say that he isn't quite a hord player. I usually take care of his rat ogres, and his ratling guns usually blow up. it is his magic that kills me, and i've tried alot to counter this, but he rolls 13's alot. i take 20 swordmasters to buff up the rank bonus, and make sure I get some in combate due to their high vulnerability to shooting. though our normal game would probably be 1500 pts, we played 3500 on monday, and it seems that the bigger the game, the bigger my fall. Of course I made several huge mistakes on monday, the biggest of which was opening up the flank of my White Lions Unit containing Teclis to his rat ogres so they could charge the flank on turn 2 or 3, i don't remember, but it hink it was 3. Also, i don't know what MSU means, I see it in alot of posts, but i have no idea what they are talking about.

One thing which is very good vs skaven unless they have maxed jezzails and two wpl's is dragon. Rats have often trouble with psychology and they have little which can stand up to the dragon and it's rider in close combat.

MSU= Multiple Small Units. It’s a philosophy of army design originally used for elves, but applied to many other forces as well (it’s the only way Ogre Kingdoms works, for example).

The basic concept is if your basic troops are expensive, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to buy extra ranks who are standing there doing nothing. If your basic guy costs 5pts, it only costs you 25pts for a rank, and that’s not bad. But if your basic guy costs 12pts, a rank costs 60, and that’s not very good. You’re paying a lot of points for a better statline; but the guys in the back usually don’t get to use that statline.

To apply it to your case, even though Elven spearmen have been reduced in price, if you tried to take block units as big as a skaven player’s, you’d probably only have half as many, and you’d be outnumbered both in models AND in number of units. When your opponent has significantly more units than you, he can easily outmaneuver your, outflank you, and win the game.

An MSU army has lots of smaller units near minimum size. This allows you to have more separate units moving around the field, even though your individual models are expensive points-wise. Then you coordinate your movement carefully to gang up on your opponent’s blocks and outflank them.

Since the Skaven models are so cheap, you probably won’t have a lot more units than he does, but if you have a similar number, it becomes a very fun and interesting game of trying to outmaneuver one another. That is, assuming that he doesn’t just shoot/magic you to death, since small units are very vulnerable to that. So it’s also important to have shooting (and usually magic) of your own, and fast-moving units which can attack/kill his shooters and mages.

I see. I was actually thinking about doing that. I have I think 23 sword masters. I f I fielded them in two units of 10-12, and gave them other things to help win combat, I should be able to out manouver him, and still win combate. this shout work with most of my units, I just need to work on the tactic.

Try 3 units of 7. Enough to kill rats and he cant shoot up all 3 units easily before you beat his guys to death.