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Hey all,I haven't posted in a while,been busy painting a Chaos force. Now,after reading up on what Games Workshop plan to do with Chaos I really don't have much interest in them anymore. In my opinion I think they've ruined them by taking away the variety of a chaos list. Anyway, now I'm considering Skaven. I've always liked the models but I don't really know how they play,can someone give me a quick run-down on it?
Thanks all.

TheSoddit

For starters it's good to notice that most skaven armies have loads of models as big units of infantry are their main thing. Many setups will have 2+ large (25ish rats) units of clanrats and one slave unit for each clanrat unit (the slaves are cannon-fodder infantry). The rats aren't very good h-to-h fighters so they need all the static combat resolution they can get and in addition they'll get significant leadership bonuses when having ranks hence the big units. As for support the army has good magic and shooting options and can also wield a plethora of cheap skirmishing support units, altough the rats lack sensible heavy hitters. One cool thing with all the cheap fodder stuff is that you can shoot into combat which is a nice bonus if you're slaves happen to be fighting some expensive knights for example.

Many solid rat armies have a big infantry baseline with slaves and clanrats with weaponteam support (they may augment these with some "elite" infantry such as plaguemonks or stormvermin). Then they usually have jezzails for big game hunting and tunnelers for taking out enemy warmachines. Round up with a caster characters and a warp lightning cannon and it's a good list. The plan is usually to whittle enemy down with magic and shooting and slow them by throwin cheap fodder units to the fray so your clanrats will engage severly crippled opponents in the end.

A skaven army is a plasma pistol. It has the ability to deal enormous amounts of damage, but every now and then, it will blow your hand off. My skaven army is build around magic. 1 grey seer, and 3 warlock engineers. Place these in two units of plague monks, so that they ignore panic. If you want the most competitive build, it's a grey seer, 3 warlock engineers, 2 units of plague monks and 8-9 units of 20 clanrats with ratling guns.

I'm not sure you can disregard Slave units, Angron. I think those are essential to the success of the skaven, you've got to have something to redirect charges and threaten flanks while the ratling guns and engineers get the business done.

When you have 8-9 clanrat units.... they redirect charges and threaten flanks themselves. and when you have a grey seer, 3 warlock engineers, and 8-9 ratling guns..... not a whole lot makes it into charge range

As chaoslord said scaven armies tend to be large numbers of units that run around trying to flank the enemy.
1v1 they usually lose vs most troops. They have some shooting to deal with heavy hitters and they have a few good combat troop units.

An average army has 2 wizards, 2 combat chars. 4-5 clanrat units, an equal number of slave units. 2 or so ratling guns, 10 jezzeles, some tunnlers, 18-24 plaguemonks, 8 or so censur bearers and a WLC.

Other armies such as the one angron tend to be one sided depending on who you face. Either you win big or lose big.