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So, we had the new Skaven book in the store last night. I skipped out on the first flight of games to read it, fairly thoroughly, and jot down my impressions.

Basically, my impression is that its a characterful, fun army book, that will wither and die in the current meta.

There are a LOT of options in here. Basically the lightning rats (warlords/grey seers/ engineers) and the sick rats (plague guys) are both fleshed out into whole lists. There are enough special weapons to require 10 seperate misfire tables. There's 2 lores. There's like 6 special characters and a Greater Daemon. You can make lists entirely from any clan, with the right special character (except Eshin && Skyre).

A lot of these options have the patented Skaven tradeoff of "lucky win, unlucky lose". Misfires let the enemy shoot with your war machines, as treachery breaks out, guard rats bite their masters back, etc. I like it.

They got rid of the aggravating stuff from the Shooty Skaven List Of Doom. Warp lightning is nerfed, the Warp Lightning Cannon needs LOS, and now hits a template instead of a line. Ratling guns need to roll to hit (FINALLY!).

A lot of the new stuff is effective, too. It isn't just gimmicks and toys, the plague stuff hits like a truck. Between the flail weilding skirmishers, the furnace and the various war machines and light war machines I can actually see Skaven infantry blocks crushing their foes. The enormous death monster spawn things are also great.

The thing is, it's all set up to beat enemy infantry. This is a first rate fighting infantry list, in a meta that preys on fighting infantry lists. Flee and Flank no longer gets it done. Nowadays everyone is a blaster list or a blaster list, and the Skaven have problems with both.

So there's my feelings on the matter. I think the codex is much funner than previously, and in the absence of the modern meta this would be a great book, really WoC level. Taken in and of itself it's a first rate offering.

Thanks for the write up, that is a shame it won't be able to hang with the big boys.

I don't know fantasy nearly as well as 40K, but it seems like Fantasy really is skewed in terms of balance.

Armies like Daemons and Vampires seem so incredibly better than everyone else that it is almost laughable. Perhaps that is my inexperience speaking, but that is definitely my impression.

Well, hopefully some good builds come out of the book to allow the rate to have a fighting chance.

I have read through it in detail (i have a scaven army) and it will be able to hang with the big boys.

The only armies I see it really struggling against are lots of stubborn chaos guys (from banner), multiple hearlds of khorn in dog units, and 3+ steggadons.

Other than this it can dish out a fair amount of coolness and pain.

It has a sickeningly large amount of weapons that don't care about toughness or armor. The doom wheel is designed to kill any monster that lands anywhere near it. And of course the abomination will be ok to go toe to toe with most other like cost-ed monsters out there and many units to boot.

The trick will be to limit yourself to a few cool bits. Its to easy to take a 50 model army with the list which will get creamed by anyone out there.

What's the counter to a Thirster that comes for your general? It seems like the only answer is "take a lot of jezzails".

40kenthusiast wrote:What's the counter to a Thirster that comes for your general? It seems like the only answer is "take a lot of jezzails".

Thats what im going to be doing -_-

though fell blade sounds good as well.
And i'll be carrying lots of brass / death globes too

More skaven

A thirster will put out an average of 5 wounds in a round of combat. This means a fully ranked unit will beat him most of the time.

Throw 30 strong clanrat units at him, flank him when the opportunity presents itself, and you will eventually watch him die. Much easier if the jezzales did a couple of wounds on the way in. This is actually very easy if he goes gunning for your general. Not so easy if he is trying to flank your army at the same time (though skaven should cover the entire table and have no flanks).

If I toss 12 ranked units on the table (5 slaves and the rest with full cmd) everything a daemon player puts on the table will be flank charged at some point in time. And flank charging daemons still beats anything they have.

New Skaven Impressions: Pretty good book, with some minor changes that leave me questioning (why are Night Runners rank-and-file now, for instance, and given throwing weapons by default [a weapon they'll now never use outside stand-and-shoot charge reactions]?) but that don't break the book.

I think the book is just fine. Ratling guns are still the bane of infantry, there are a lot of poisoned attacks, and the magic is excellent.

I wanna take 3 of those giant mutant monstrosity things. 50/50 shot of one of them getting back up!

I can't wait for a tournament game where one, tearing through my lines, finally goes down to my attacks, then gets back up with all 6 wounds. Hooray ><

Cheers for the thoughts 40. I am certainly interested to see what my current army ends up looking like, though I already miss having all my skirmishing night runners around to star things and generally be irritating. Blocking those guys up boggles my mind too ...

A question for those who have seen the book: is the Verminlord really as bad as it sounds? Yes, it isn't 100% terrible, but 500 points for: (+) level 4, 5+ ward, terror, big stats; (-) large target, no armor, not your general (so no Ld spreading beyond heroes), 500 points? Just seems fairly meh, for a model I'd really like to run, but don't want to lose Ld7 for.

Also, does it really have no options? And does it have demonic (in)stability?

- Salvage

Reecius wrote:Thanks for the write up, that is a shame it won't be able to hang with the big boys.

I don't know fantasy nearly as well as 40K, but it seems like Fantasy really is skewed in terms of balance.

Armies like Daemons and Vampires seem so incredibly better than everyone else that it is almost laughable. Perhaps that is my inexperience speaking, but that is definitely my impression.

Well, hopefully some good builds come out of the book to allow the rate to have a fighting chance.

Says the guy who walluped my Vampires with his Wood Elves... twice!

Boss_Salvage wrote:A question for those who have seen the book: is the Verminlord really as bad as it sounds?

From what I understand, it's got the statline of a Bloodthrister with Flight swapped out for all its other special rules. Make of that what you will.

Apparently his glaive does D3 wounds too, which is always handy. But I still think the big guy will get shot ASAP ... maybe that's some of the thinking about him not being your general

Eh, I'll be one of those dudes running it because I have the model and an excuse to finish striping and rebuilding it (painted it when I was, what, 11? )

- Salvage

Says the guy who walluped my Vampires with his Wood Elves... twice!

Haha, but yeah, my Army was the paper to your rock! Plus I was rolling red hot. I killed your chariot with archers!

I think your army would drop kick most others.

What's the counter to a Thirster that comes for your general? It seems like the only answer is "take a lot of jezzails".

How are they a counter to anything flying? Since they don't skirmish anymore and are still move or fire their line of sight is incredibly limited and therefore easily avoidable and/or predictable.

I don't know fantasy nearly as well as 40K, but it seems like Fantasy really is skewed in terms of balance.

I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with the ETC composition rules? The scoring was designed for the European Team Championships but atleast around my parts all the tournaments are these days heavily comped in order to make WHFB in any sort of way playable. The first part of the system is that Vampires & Daemons & Dark Elves use 2000p armies, while everyone else use 2250p, and O&G and Ogres use 2500 points, but there's plenty other generic and specific restrictions in addition to that. There's no point at all playing uncomped events. The UK GT is probably the biggest uncomped series of events in Europe and the whole tournament seems to have become a subject of ridicule since the top50 is 95% 'big three' armies each time.

The funny thing is that even when DoC use 2000p armies, aren't allowed a third unit of Horrors, aren't allowed more than 2 units of Flesh Hounds, aren't allowed a second unit of Flamers, Greater Daemons take an extra hero slot, aren't allowed daemonic standards to models that use any other daemonic gifts, aren't allowed any named characters, etc, etc, they can still wipe the floor with 2500p O&G armies, but the restrictions make the game a lot more interesting.

Warhammer is actually a ton of fun once you 'tier' the army books a little. It even makes the weaker armies somewhat attractive. So far it looks like Skaven are definately far from being top tier but aren't O&G/Ogres bad either, and will therefore have a 250 extra points to play with compared to the big three. I just don't like that GW is giving every army a lord choice and multiple rare choice monsters. It looks like soon every army can have a Greater Daemon or a Dragon supported by Hydras/Treemen/Varghulfs/Hell Pit Abominations/Doomwheels/Stegadons etc. Lizardmen armies are actually nearly entirely made out of large monsters. Try to get value out of standard WS3 S3 vulnerable to psychology rank and file in a game filled with monsters of doom and darkness. But hey, Zombies are still awesome!

To balance the game a bit, tournaments around here have a 'tier' system, where the armies judged to be more powerful due to power-creep (Daemons, VC, Dark Elves at the moment) get 2000pts, mid-tier armies (Warriors of Chaos, Wood Elves, High Elves, Empire, Bretonnia, Lizardmen, Dwarfs, Orcs and Goblins, and Skaven) get 2250 pts, and bottom-tier armies (those with old books, specifically Ogre Kingdoms, BoC, and Tomb Kings) get 2500pts.

I have to say that could be an interesting comp system.

Around here they have started comping your army in advance at larger tournaments. The first two games (out of five) are played against like comp armies. A lot of people try to take lesser armies to get a couple easy wins out of it and end up doing well (comp plays a decently sized role in score too).

As far as skaven comp...They are probabally on par with warriors of chaos. They can go toe to toe with most armies but not some of the really overpowered deamon combos that exist.

Good post Therion, and I really do like the ETC points-tiering system. As opposed to the American system that Cypher describes, which, while I support it, seems like so very little towards balancing the overall army disparities ...

- Salvage